The Heavenly Queens of Ishgar
by Azuryne
Summary: For one woman, a new world brings her a new youth, new opportunities. and new adventures.
1. Azu Yami

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.**

* * *

In an undisclosed location deep underground, way out of the reaches of most of humanity, there was a single room. Despite being only a single room, it was quite spacious, being big enough to house an incredibly powerful computer and all of the large screens attached to it. Sitting in a simple black chair before the screens that numbered at least 50 was only a single woman. She was the only person on the face of the Earth that knew of this room's location, for it was hers and hers alone.

 _Finally, after all the work I've done, the project is complete,_ she thought, relieved, as she looked up at the data flying across the screens. To anyone else, the strings of data streaming across the glass screens would seem like nonsense, but that too had a reason. She was working on a subject not completely unknown to humanity, but rather completely untouched by it, for humanity had never (fully) proven its existence before her.

 _With this project's completion, the limits of what is fundamentally possible will be pushed once again,_ she reflected proudly. _I really cannot be grateful enough for the fact that I was able to find that source of 'magic' in Egypt. Without it, I never could have come this far so quickly. With it, I can finally escape this world._

 _ **Aren't you just running away again?**_ As per the usual, her ever prominent inner voice had something to say about her situation.

 _It's called opening new doors rather than staring at an old and closed one and waiting for it to open. I only phrased it in a different way,_ she retorted. Dropping into a more mellow tone, she continued, _Although I suppose this doesn't solve the real issue… But I doubt anything can solve it, even with this Egyptian 'magic'..._

 _ **That's a pretty pathetic path of thought if you ask me,**_ it responded, calm as ever.

 _I don't think I asked_ , she sharply returned.

 _ **Too bad, you get my opinion anyway and you always will because it's just like that,**_ it said. _**Now, how about you hurry up and do something more useful than talking to yourself before I say anything else you obviously won't like.**_

 _Whatever, but until we're acclimated to our new home, wherever that may be, how about you keep most of your opinions to yourself? It's obviously impossible for you to keep everything you think of to yourself, but at least don't do this to 'us' every single day while we're still unfamiliar with the new lands. Better yet, how about you decide whether or not you want to be supportive of me or a detriment to my life? You've always been the latter of the two, but since we're going to a new place and opening new doors, there's always room for a change of heart._

 _ **Yeah, sure, whatever.**_ _ **Doesn't matter. I'll shut up for a while and 'ponder'. Or so you'd hope…**_

… _Just do it._

 _ **You can't control me.**_

 _I realize that but just do it anyways._ Making sure to move on before it got a chance to respond again, she continued, _We're leaving now, so be quiet and let me do what I need to do._

 _ **Whatever.**_

Sighing, she rose from her chair and let her midnight black hair fall to its natural place, perfectly blending in with the black sweatshirt she was wearing, which in turn matched her black sweatpants. Most everything visible on her was black, save her skin of course, from her irises to the flats on her feet. The only thing she didn't color black other than her skin was her nails, which she gladly kept in their natural state for no other reason than that she liked it better that way.

Standing straight, she looked over the data on the screen one last time, which had settled into various mathematical representations and comments that were spread across the different screens. Technically, all of these things weren't completely necessary. She could've cut down the time spent on this project by half if she hadn't done what wasn't completely necessary, but she had a good reason to do the extra work. While all the extra calculations weren't necessary for traveling to another world, it would be impossible to control where the endpoint would be without these calculations. In other words, without the extra calculations, the chances of ending up in an inhospitable place were astronomically high. She could not risk failure on something she had worked so hard for, so she made sure to be absolutely certain that she would end up on a world that would make a good new home.

 _Plus,_ she added to herself, _if I can get the basics of this instant transportation down with the calculations necessary in mind, I can use it for much easier transportation in the next world._

 _ **Hurry up! You're taking too long!**_

 _I told you to shut up, didn't I?!_

Quickly committing everything on the screens to memory, she then willed the world around her to act at her whim. Thus, a blinding pure white light enveloped the entire room and when it cleared, the woman was no longer there. Only the lone black chair remained before the screens, which had all turned dark.

* * *

Standing in the middle of what appeared to be a forest, the black-haired woman took in her surroundings. She was relieved to breathe in the fresher air and see a bluer sky in comparison to the heavily polluted Earth, but she didn't have the slightest expectation that she'd become so short. At first, she just thought that everything in this new world was bigger, but then she realized that her body felt a little different. It was no longer the shape and moderate curve of the young adult she was, but rather the shape and nearly flat curve of her 12-year-old self. She was pretty sure that there was nothing in the calculations about her body being suddenly over a decade younger, but she could always just change back into her older appearance if she felt like it, so it didn't matter all that much. She could at least be grateful that her clothes changed sizes to meet her sudden new needs.

Rerouting her thoughts to more useful subjects, she took in her immediate surroundings. Beneath her was a layer of exceptionally green grass, perfect in color albeit wild and unkempt, only blemished here and there by the rocky ground under it. Around her up to her waist were innumerable species of shrubs, bushes, and ferns. At eye level, she was met with only a few similar species of broad-leafed trees. It seemed like just any other wild forest… until she looked upwards.

Looking up, she was met with a most bizarre sight. A single tree stood out so much from the rest of the land that she could not help but follow its gnarled, mildly curved trunk skywards. As her gaze rose higher, she eventually saw the branches of the tree, which resembled twisted roots rather than actual branches. Above that, she saw what she thought of as an island on top of the tree, which looked ridiculous yet very real

Allowing her eyes to follow even higher up, she was met with another sight she didn't expect. She could've sworn that when she looked up when she had first arrived, she had seen a spectacularly blue sky, but now, she was absolutely sure that she was looking at a wall of water. Above her. …

"At least I ended up somewhere interesting…" she sighed. "I wonder why I never thought of making a little underwater world, though. I could be all alone, enjoying the scenery around me while the fish swim by on the other side of the glass - or a massive 'magic' barrier in this case."

 _My interests aside, I should probably gather a little information on this world to go off of,_ she decided. _It'd be boring if I knew everything from the get-go, so I'll have to limit myself to only the bare minimum…_

Using only a little of her mysterious power, she scanned the world for some general knowledge that could be helpful:

 _{Language:_

 _The entire world, known as Earthland, seems to speak a language very similar to Japanese. There are a few dialects spread across the different continents, but their differences with the main language are subtle.}_

 _{Political Geography:_

 _I am currently on land not claimed by any country, although it is loosely affiliated with a country known as the Kingdom of Fiore. The Kingdom of Fiore, or just Fiore, is located on the western end of the continent known as Ishgar. Fiore shares the continent with Isvan, the Principality of Veronica, Seven, Bosco, Iceberg, Joya, Bellum, the Kingdom of Stella, Minstrel, Midi, Desierto, Sin, Caelum, Enca, and the Pergrande Kingdom. Of those countries, Caelum and Enca are island nations while the Pergrande Kingdom is comparable in size to the rest of the countries combined. To the west of Ishgar is the continent of Alakitasia, whose biggest and most influential country goes by the name of the Alvarez Empire.}_

 _{'Magic'?:_

 _Magic is, in fact, a very prominent thing on Earthland. Additionally, it is very similar to the thing I've been calling "magic", if not the same in principle. Particles of magic are known as 'Ethernano' and are a part of every living organism on Earthland and are abundant throughout the atmosphere itself._

 _Mages/Wizards are people who can use their Magic Power to cast spells and employ magical objects, whereas the majority of people can only use magic items. Making up 10% of Earthland's population, mages are something like magical batteries, where they can use a certain amount Magic Power before having to 'recharge' their internal Ethernano storage. The remaining 90% of Earthland's population is either incapable or unwilling to use Magic, although mostly the former._

 _Mages are generally capable of using only one or two types of Magic. To make up for the lack of an ability to diversify in their skillset, many mages join together to form guilds. Some people join for that reason, some join for the money you get by doing jobs with the guild, but some just join for the social interactions and amusement they might get from being in a guild. The leader of a guild is known as the Guild Master and is often addressed as such._

 _Fiore is the most magically influenced country on the continent of Ishgar because its government is very welcoming to mages and the wonders of magic, but the other countries are not to be discredited.}_

 _{Time:_

 _Individual days, weeks, and months carry little importance on Earthland. People mostly pay attention to the cycle of the moon, the four seasons, and count of the years. Speaking of which, the current year was known as X791. On Earthland, the "X" is put before the year, much like A.D., B.C., B.C.E., or C.E. would go after the year on Earth._

… _I guess I'll just be speaking Japanese for the rest of my time here, then…_ Azu decided, knowing that pretty much everyone on Earthland spoke some form similar to the Earthern language she knew. _All things considered, I'll probably also settle down in Fiore since it's the most magically advanced country and since it's the closest country to my current location._

Sweeping her gaze around once again, she murmured, "A world of bountiful magic… Just what have I thrown myself into?"

Turning her attention once again to the land around her, she finally chose to take her first steps in the new world. (She hadn't actually taken a single step from where she had appeared on Earthland, only swiveling her head to soak in her surroundings.) Walking leisurely through the forest, she saw an enormous, scaly… thing… walking on its hind legs with its much smaller arms dangled in front of it. If not for the prominent, dark round section of the upper front part of its head, she could've sworn that it was related to a dinosaur like _tyrannosaurus rex_ from Earth.

Continuing her stroll, she eventually came upon an unsettling sight. In a straight line that went on for at least 100 yards, the grass was ripped up from the ground, the trees were snapped in half, and most concerning of all, around 20 half-buried bodies were strewn across the barren stretch. Some of them showed signs of significant injury, although they were bandaged. Others were simply buried and showed no signs of injury whatsoever, baffling the woman-turned-girl in black. How could they be uninjured in the aftermath of a clearly devastating attack? Why did some of them have bandages across their bodies, but sustained no injuries from that same attack?

Looking skywards once more, she reasoned, _Maybe that magical barrier that's keeping this place dry despite being underwater is the reason why these people are uninjured despite the destruction around them._

She walked up to one of the bodies - one with spiky pink hair - and touched his unburied and outstretched hand. He was warm, but he didn't have a pulse. It was like he wasn't quite dead, yet he wasn't quite alive either. Checking on a few other bodies to see if the rest would show the same signs as the pink-haired one, she only got the same results time and time again. She could only liken what she was sensing to people being frozen in time, for if that weren't the case, a live body shouldn't be warm without a pulse. The only other option was that all of them were murdered seconds before she had arrived, but that was nigh impossible for many reasons, one of which was that she heard no signs of a scuffle since she had arrived and she hadn't arrived all too far from where she currently was.

"Should I do something about this?..." she wondered aloud.

"I'm sure they would appreciate it greatly if you helped out," a new voice behind her said. "As would I."

Jumping slightly, for she hadn't detected the presence behind her until it had spoken, she carefully turned around to face the source of the voice. It would be her first conversation on the new world and she was rather unsure of what to expect, but she decided to expect the worst just in case. Once she had turned around, she was met with a short girl (although they were actually about the same height) with peachy skin and very long, wavy, pastel yellow-blonde hair that almost reached to her bare feet. Adorning the top of her head was an ahoge, which the girl in black had never seen on a real person. The blond girl wore a frilly white dress with patterns of blue and hot pink near the chest area. Atop her ears were seemed to be a pair of small white wings. All of those light colors brought out the deep green of her eyes, which seemed to be sad yet hopeful.

"Who are you?" The girl in black questioned.

"I am Mavis Vermillion, the first Guild Master of Fairy Tail," the girl in white, now known as Mavis, answered before continuing, "Who are you?"

"I am Azu Yami," the girl in black, now known as Azu, responded. "I suppose I should also mention that I just arrived in this world, although I do know a little about it."

"Another world?" Mavis asked curiously.

Nodding, Azu continued, "I came from a world known as 'Earth' rather than 'Earthland', and I ended up on this island when I came here. This place seems to be protected by a magical barrier, although then there's also these people here that look less than okay…" She paused slightly before starting again; "Are these people here part of your guild - Fairy Tail?"

"Ah… I knew your magic signature seemed different from anything I've ever felt before," Mavis commented, curious as to Azu's origins. "But that aside, yes, these were the core members of Fairy Tail before they were attacked. All I could do was turn their collective power into what you described as a magical barrier, freezing them in time and sparing them from harm. The ground was only protected from about 99.5 percent of that one attack, but the damage done to the island doesn't matter in comparison to the lives of my guildmates."

"Who attacked?" Azu asked, wondering who or what could've potentially done so much damage in one strike.

"The Black Dragon of the Apocalypse, Acnologia," Mavis replied, although taking on a foul tone. "If not for how strongly all of Fairy Tail felt towards their fellow guildmates as one big family, my spell never would've been able to save them."

"So, dragons exist here…" Azu surmised quietly. Raising her voice so that Mavis could hear clearly, she inquired, "What do feeling strongly as a family and your spell have to do with each other?"

"Oh! The spell I used turns the bonds of friendship and family of my guildmates into a defense whose strength is equal to the strength of their bonds!" Mavis exclaimed with joyous pride.

' _Friendship saves the day', huh… If that's actually feasible here, I ought to expect ridiculous things more often from here on out,_ Azu mused, recognizing the cliché. "I see." Recalling something Mavis had mentioned, she then asked, "You said something like 'my magic signature seemed different from anything you've ever felt before', right? Is it _that_ different?"

"I know I haven't seen everything that Earthland has to offer, but your signature feels much more varied, more expansive, and far more powerful," she responded. "In another sense, it was also very…"

An awkward silence ensued, although only until Azu broke it some seconds later, intrigued as to how Mavis was able to notice such details. "Yes?"

"In another sense, it was also very dark. Interestingly, it's a color almost exactly like that of your clothes, of your hair, and of your eyes," Mavis finished.

"Thanks?..." Azu returned with a dead expression. Lightening up, she continued, "That should be a good enough introduction for now, but we've still got your guildmates to take care of, no?"

"Thank you!" Mavis shouted in delight, beginning to radiate rays of pure and innocent joy with a great smile on her face and with stars in her eyes. Had the rays been visible, Azu was sure that she would have been blinded almost instantly.

 _This may as well be very interesting…_

* * *

"… _different …"_

Even if she knew that Mavis didn't mean anything bad with that word, it only kept ringing in Azu's head. It took her away from the issue at hand, even for a little, and made her look back on the long years of work it took her to get to where she was.

 **\\\ Flashback \\\**

It was a blissfully ignorant time - junior high school.

Naturally, a child cannot be expected to know how the world works. For that matter, an adult cannot necessarily be expected to know how the world works. For all they know, everything could be within reach. Everything could be possible. It could only be a matter of willpower to achieve a far fetched goal.

At the beginning of her junior high school years, Azu's mental companion was brought to life. She didn't will it to do so and she never did find a solid reason for its appearance and existence. Regardless of its reason for existence, it slowly began to give her wonderful images of grandeur, vast power, unrivaled intelligence, and all aspects of an 'ideal' life imaginable. She found herself gravitating towards the wonderful images, for she saw herself lacking in all ways possible, despite what others would say about her.

People always told her how smart she was, some even calling her a genius, but she knew better than to take those comments to heart. All she had to show for were excellent grades in school. Do grades in school truly represent how smart a person is? Not at all. Do people actually believe that grades have nothing to do with how smart a person truly is? Of course not. Not where she went to school, at least. All she had was a mind that soaked up knowledge like a sponge. It was all just memorization and comprehension for her, because that's all she needed. Intelligence had little to do with her academic success.

No, what truly mattered when she considered her lack of intelligence, and lack of greatness, was the number of mistakes she would constantly make. People say it's good to make mistakes sometimes because they serve as learning experiences, but she never seemed to be able to learn from her mistakes. Over and over, she'd keep making the same mistakes, time after time again. She humiliated herself in ways she would never be able to ignore nor forget anytime soon. They always served as reminders to how truly stupid she was when she couldn't learn to do things the right way for once. They always served as reminders to how truly worthless she was when she couldn't stop making the same exact mistakes.

Soon enough, she began to lose herself to the thoughts that her mental companion fed to her. It only served to turn her into the things she thought of herself as - stupid and worthless. She began to lose sight of everything that mattered to her. She began to lose interest in everything but the wonderful images of greatness. She began to lose motivation to do anything constructive.

And yet she did nothing to stop herself. A year later, her situation was becoming too dire for her to handle. Visions of greatness still very much prevalent in her mind, she could no longer stand idle. She had to do something. She knew that things were only getting worse and worse for her, never quite hitting rock bottom even though such a limit should have been hit long ago. She knew that, at that rate, she wouldn't be able to survive with herself much longer. As she analyzed her situation frantically, searching for solutions and grasping at the greatness she so longed for, she saw only one possible option left. And it just happened to be the option that was the closest to impossible. She even knew that it was a nearly impossible task, but she thought of it as the only thing she could do.

She would have to pursue the grandeur that had been endlessly fed to her for an entire year.

 _It's also a time when people often begin to change and where some simply can't hope to cope with themselves - junior high school._

She put every ounce of energy and every shred of intelligence she could muster into the project right from the beginning, planning her steps relentlessly. Miraculously, she kept up with her school work, but she only cared about her personal project. She was also fortunate in the sense that her parents were often on long business trips and didn't particularly care about what she was doing. They also happened to leave her with practically everything she would ever need for her endeavor. It all seemed too perfect, but one can't complain about a 'perfect' start when the task ahead is tough.

Eventually, she had planned out endless abilities and how to achieve them scientifically. Some were incredibly generic, like flight, while other things were more fantastical, like the ability to control energy of all kinds. As she let her imagination run wild, using everything possible to her advantage, more and more abilities began to fall under the fantastical category.

Whereas the results certainly look enticing, the process of attaining such abilities was less than attractive. She's relying on technology and science to achieve her goals, not magic of any sort, so she'd have to somehow connect or implant something inside of herself to gain each individual ability. Naturally, that sort of work was extremely dangerous, even more so because she was doing it herself, as a child. Everything banked on the first try working with absolute precision because if it didn't work out, she risked unknown consequences, even death. However, she didn't care all too much what it took to achieve her goals so long as they could be reached in the end.

In the end, the mishaps came again and again, resulting in various random effects to her body. With most of those effects, she would eventually just reverse them or somehow change them to make them useful with her new abilities, but there was one that she decided to keep as is. She could've reversed all of its effects easily, but she decided to keep one that turned her the color of her blood into midnight black. She took care of all the other effects of having black blood, but she thought that having black blood was cool in of itself.

…

Years later, she would finally complete the technological modifications to her body. Along the way, she had changed her brain dramatically, splitting it into a technological half and a natural half. It was the most single most dangerous operation she had performed on herself, but she didn't regret the risk at all. With a technological half of her brain, she not only provided a central figure to control all the other abilities flawlessly but also greatly increased her computational ability, raised her level and speed of comprehension, and gained the ability to limit her emotions.

At that point, it was fitting to call her insane, for she truly was. Her emotions were beyond hope to control by any normal methods, which was part of the reason why she was so willing to perform the operations on her brain. She ultimately decided on simply cutting off most of her negative emotions. It didn't make her a happy person by any means, but at least it would mean she wouldn't have to suffer as much.

Seemingly finished with what began as a nearly impossible task, she was still technically human, but she no longer really felt like that was true. Her body and mind were too different from what people would normally consider human, but she did not care. She had given herself a brand new way of life and she knew better than to waste it.

Even during the time she was developing her abilities, she had been traversing the globe. Initially, she had done it in search of new ideas for her list of abilities, borrowing ideas from stories of immortals, gods, demons, heroes, magic, and whatever else she could find. Now, she did it for the thrill of travel. She was free to sightsee, learn about culture in detail, learn the intricate history of the world, and enjoy the endless treasures the Earth had to offer.

Eventually, she reached her last region: Egypt. She had visited previously to learn about the small details on their deities, but she hadn't fully appreciated the country's splendor back then. This time, she made sure to do things like touring the tombs and ancient burial grounds that were rumored to be guarded by special magic spells/curses. However, when she had reached one burial ground in particular, she felt something strange, something she hadn't felt anywhere else on the planet. Normally, it would be easier to brush off such a feeling by thinking that there's always more to explore about the planet, but her situation was quite different. It wasn't as if there were too many things on Earth she hadn't sensed in some way or another, for she had been from the poles to the center of the Earth before reaching that one special area.

The special feeling urged her to come closer to it and, curious, she gave in to it. Wandering through the ancient burial site, she was eventually led to the grave of a rather interesting man: the head inspector that oversaw the construction of the pyramids of Giza. Initially, she saw nothing too special about the grave, but the feeling was emanating strongly from a particular spot near the center of the grave. Normally, she wouldn't desecrate a grave, especially not one as important as this, but she once again gave in to the special feeling.

It was not long before she found the object she was looking for. It was a jar, perfectly intact after thousands of years, tightly sealed and complete with hieroglyphs on its side. She could only assume the hieroglyphs were something like an ancient 'magic spell'. Initially, she laughed off the thought of the item possessing magic because she had never found evidence of such a thing existing on Earth and because magic was just a childish concept to her, but the jar in her hands insisted on defying her thoughts. It practically screamed that it was bursting with magical energy.

Compelled to open the jar, she found an iridescent liquid within it that was glowing, if only slightly. She stared at it momentarily before a new feeling compelled her to drink the liquid. It wasn't as if she hadn't questioned that particular feeling, but it forced itself through her doubts until she had downed its contents fully.

Upon drinking the glowing liquid, she felt as if her insides were exploding. It was the first time in a long time that she had felt such intense pain, for even most of her most painful experiments weren't that painful. She had an ability to heal herself but each time she used it, she only found herself in excruciating pain once again. When she tried more forcefully, she only increased the amount of pain that followed. Like most people, she didn't enjoy being in pain, so she eventually forced herself to black out and hope the pain would be gone once she woke up again.

She probably could have found a better place to black out than in front of the grave she had just robbed, though.

…

Hours later, she finally woke up once again. However, she no longer felt the same as she had before drinking the glowing liquid. The pain was gone (thankfully), but she felt a new dimension of power within her, one with so much more potential waiting to be tapped. Then and there, her challenge to attain even greater heights was revived. Giving her thanks to the deceased inspector for granting her such an opportunity, even if he hadn't meant to do that, she left to begin her second journey.

This time, things would be more complicated than just imagining ideas and making them possible thanks to the world's scientific knowledge and a little creativity. To her understanding, her new magical power was not bound by the known laws of science, or at least not all of the time. However, it clearly had its own laws of nature because it proved very difficult to get anything useful out of her new power. With this 'magic', she would have to come to an understanding of an entirely unknown type of energy. Only then could she figure out how to use her magical powers effectively to create new and improved abilities.

Somehow, she just knew that things were only going to get more dangerous from that point on.

…

Years more passed and she had finally mastered all the aspects of her magical abilities. Eventually, she had come to the realization that the abilities she created with her 'magic' were basically just insanely powerful versions of the abilities she had previously created with science alone. She found that for magical and technological abilities alike, the sky was the limit so long as one's imagination could still run wild and so long as one still had it in them to continue working at their goals. For her, all she needed was creativity and motivation (although the first was much more plentiful than the second).

The downside of her situation, however, was that governments around the world were after her for various reasons. Some wanted her dead for political reasons while others wanted her to work for them, with politics being only one of many reasons. She managed to stay out of a majority of that mess, but she did eventually have relations with the governments of a few select countries.

She marveled at the fact that she had somehow never let her immense power get to her head. She had long had the power to take over entire countries, continents, the entire world, or simply destroy all of them if she wanted to, but she had never done more than try to live her new life to its fullest extent.

Azu had given herself a new life and she wasn't about to just go and waste it.

 **\\\ End Flashback \\\**

"-u? Azu?" Mavis asked, a worried look spread on her face.

Noting that she had spaced out for a considerable amount of time, Azu simply told Mavis, "Don't worry. I was just looking back to the past for a bit, but the condition of your guildmates takes priority right now." A small pause later, she continued, "Well, I haven't got much of a clue as to what to do, although I'd assume you know something?"

Mavis's only response was another bright smile, accompanied by her little wing ornaments flapping excitedly.


	2. A New Friend

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.**

* * *

Mavis's plan seemed more than insane with the amount of cheesy incantations she had to go through to dispel the 'Fairy Sphere', as she called it. Azu, severely questioning why the process had to be so ridiculous, ended up settling for "How come this spell is so powerful?" rather than a barrage of insults in an attempt to not get on the bad side of the first person she's met in this world.

Ignoring the slightly annoyed tone Azu had posed the question in, Mavis replied, "This is one of the Three Great Fairy Magics, which are the most powerful spells at the disposal of our guild. This one is our ultimate defense spell. Another one of the three is for an ultimate offense. The third one is a variant of another spell and is meant for defeating those who make themselves enemies of our guild. There's another kind of magic we have that's more powerful than any of the Three Great Fairy Magics, but only the Guild Masters of Fairy Tail are supposed to know exactly what that is."

"So I take it that your guild is pretty strong," Azu commented after a slight pause. Mavis nodded before Azu continued, "And I'm also assuming that you're not the first and only guild master of Fairy Tail given that you used plural for those who know the third of your most powerful spells." Again, Mavis nodded. "Before this spell was cast, the third was here on the island with most of the guild's current strongest members and they ended up fighting against the second who had turned to dark magic. It's been seven years since then, so Fairy Tail now has a fourth master in all likelihood since the third is stuck here," Mavis said before looking back at the bodies strewn before them.

Both Azu and Mavis stared down at the half-alive bodies of the Fairy Tail mages. Mavis was admiring the strength of the mages and bonds that the third master had managed to mold and shape in her guild. It was exactly what she hoped would come of her guild, just like when she started it all that time ago. In the meantime, Azu was mulling over her own thoughts of Fairy Tail.

 _Given all the things I've heard from Mavis, this guild is more like a big family, even if most of them aren't biologically related at all. More literally, it's a guild of good friends that treat each other like family, taking the loving bonds of friendship and family and turning into their power. No matter what happens to them, they always stick together_ , she thought _. It's unlike anything I've experienced in my old life..._

 _ **So you really didn't need me to be your personal detriment after all, did you?**_ Her inner monologue chimed in mockingly. _**You're doing wonderfully on your own!**_

 _... shut up._ The only response that came was a mental shrug. _Anyhow, hopefully, I can join eventually if they accept me. I think it would be nice to be surrounded by lots of supporting people for once instead of always being lonely.  
_  
"I'm sure they'll all welcome you with open arms when you're ready," Mavis told her. Azu would've thanked her for the support, but she was too bothered by the fact that Mavis could read her thoughts. She hoped that such an ability would only be used for the wellbeing of her guild and not as an abused power, even if that was a hypocritical thought to come from herself of all people. "We value our honesty and morals, so yes, I only use this when the thoughts concern the guild," Mavis assured her. Azu simply nodded in understanding before returning her attention back to the people before her.

"Well, now is a good a time as ever," Azu declared.

Chanting the incantations she had been given loudly, Azu couldn't help but turn her mind back to what it meant to have a friendship or be a family. _It's about time that I relearned what it means to value someone to no end. It's about time that I relearned what it means to always be there for someone, no matter what you must do. It's about time that I relearned what it means to truly be like a family, what it means to be loved. Maybe it'll be different from what I first learned since this world seems different in many ways, but no matter the world, those definitions should not change. But seriously, how long has it been since I've had the heart to think about something like that... it's warming and humane for a change.  
_  
As these thoughts ran through her head, she felt the magic resulting in her incantations become a lot more powerful, speeding up the process greatly and using less energy. _It would appear that the core of the strongest that Fairy Tail has to offer lies in their hearts. That alone is truly remarkable.  
_  
"I am proud to be their first guild master and a founding member because of that, Azu," Mavis replied with a sweet smile. Azu, in turn, smiled a little as well, but never stopping her spell's progress.

After several minutes of chanting, the island began to shake. As Azu finished the spell with a little encouragement from Mavis, she noticed that the island was slowly rising to the surface, accompanied by a bright golden light that surrounded the Fairy Sphere.

As they rose above the surface, both the girls noticed short flashes of a boat not too far from the island through the water cascading down the sides of what remained of Fairy Sphere. Azu didn't know what the big symbol on its front sail represented, but she figured out pretty quick when Mavis shouted "Fairy Tail!" in pure delight.

Glancing at Mavis, Azu figured she wasn't quite ready to meet with everyone just yet and wanted to explore a lot more before finally joining. A glance and brief eye contact with Mavis made it clear that she had understood.

"Before you leave, there's a question I wanted to ask you," Mavis started, looking at Azu with a slightly unsure expression. "Are you really the age that you look?"

Azu eyed her for a moment thinking _'hypocrite…'_ before replying, "You could say that, yes. I'm sure that you, as the guardian or whatever of this island and guild, would've noticed that I somehow arrived here not too long ago. Would I be correct to assume that?" With a nod from Mavis, she continued, "Well, in the process of traveling a long way, I somehow lost quite a few years to my body. However, I kept my mind and all my abilities, which was the only reason I was able to help you and your guild members. I'm technically a decade older than I look, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll just be 12, again." With that, Mavis nodded in understanding again.

 _Well, that would certainly explain a few things, like her immense power and lack of childlike behavior for the most part,_ Mavis thought. _It's not really too surprising, though, since I-_

"And what about you, Mavis? Don't you seem a lot older than you look?" Azu asked almost rudely, interrupting Mavis's train of thought. "I doubt a guild that's supposedly as strong as yours could've had three guild masters after you when we look about the same age." Mavis expected an accusing glare from Azu because of her tone, but it wasn't there. She received a glare, yes, but underneath the suspicion was warmth and a desire for mutual trust. Smiling at Azu's hidden warmth, Mavis replied, "Like you, I am older than I look, but rather than a decade older, I am a century older. Unlike you, however, I am not able to use my physical body for the time being, so I use this thought projection to interact with others."

Azu nodded in understanding, realizing one more thing. "So, since we seem to be a little similar and we kind of want to trust each other, do you want to… you know… be friends?" _It's been such a long time since I've been able to even ask that question that it's awkward for me at this point._ Looking hopefully at Mavis, Azu notices her smiling brightly before she said, "Of course!" and ran up to hug the girl in black. Mildly surprised, Azu hesitated for few seconds before wrapping her arms around Mavis in return, relishing in the warmth of another person for the first time in so many years.

Pulling away in looking into Azu's eyes, Mavis smiled brightly. "I know you're not quite ready to meet the rest of the guild, so I think you'd want to leave quickly before they arrive. I'll be fine from here on out with the guild, but your help will not be forgotten," she said.

"Thank you, Mavis. I'll keep in touch with you with telepathy, and don't worry about the fact that I don't know where your body is since I can just communicate directly through your magic. Hopefully, we'll meet again soon, maybe a few months from now," Azu said, a little sad that she had to leave her new and only friend. "By then, I might be ready to join your guild, but I want to plan a little surprise, so don't spoil it!" She added with a small grin and a wink.

Beaming, Mavis replied, "Of course, Azu! I'll be waiting, but for now, goodbye!"

"Goodbye, Mavis," Azu said as she began to fade as a result of her teleportation ability before she had completely left, as if she hadn't been there at all.

* * *

 **/ Hargeon Town /**

 _Even an important port city like this is so much more quaint and nice in comparison to Earth's cities, full of disarray and despair,_ Azu thought. _Since I'm new around here, I should probably get a political sense of the country first…_

 _{Continent… "Ishgar", which is basically a massive peninsula in the eastern part of Earthland with a lot of islands around it. Capital city of current location's nation, Fiore… "Crocus". Government system(s) of Fiore… There's a monarchy, but also a governing body for all mages on Ishgar called the "Magic Council". Location of the Magic Council… "Era". … The Alvarez Empire I learned about earlier apparently tried to invade Ishgar some years ago from their own continent of "Alakitasia" in the west, but they were stopped by the Magic Council. …}_

 _This information should do for now,_ Azu thought. _For now, I guess I should go to Era to learn more about magic and its history in this world. They probably won't give it up easily since I look like a young child, though. I'll have to prove my worth somehow…_

Quickly finding a map of the world and a short book about Earthland's geography in a shop nearby, she memorized both of them completely, completely sure that this was very useful information.

Returning both items, she focused on the location of Era from memory, willing herself to go there instantaneously with her powers, scientific and magical, until she was no longer in Hargeon.

* * *

 **/ Era /**

Almost too conveniently, Azu reappeared right in front of the building which she could only assume belonged to the headquarters of the Magic Council, considering its unique design.

 _There's no way in hell that they're going to let a 12-year-old girl stick around for no reason, so I'll just have to take the route that'll get me arrested_ , she thought to herself. _In any case, I'll be able to escape from prison, magic or no magic, since I'm not a fool who relies on only one set of abilities. If I can prove myself to be powerful and competent enough, I might be able to strike a deal, so I'd say it's my best shot._

Azu scanned the interior for signs of life and found no shortage of it, but she was particularly interested in ten powerful presences all in close proximity, one of whom was ridiculously overpowered compared to the other nine. Doing a second-long analysis of the group, she found that the powerful one was the supposed strongest mage on the continent and the other nine made up the governing body of the council.

 _Looks like I've found a party to crash_ , Azu thought with a smirk. Before too long, she was already no longer in front of the building.

Reappearing before the group of ten, she spoke. "Why, a good day to the Magic Council and the one called the strongest," Azu said mockingly.

Before the council members could even open their mouths, the stronger mage spoke up. "But of course I am the strongest, for I am a god! God Serena, ranked first among the Wizard Saints!" He cried out in indignation, dramatically throwing his arms in the air and swaying his body.

 _ **Forced analysis: {The Ten Wizard Saints… Wizard Saints are given their title by the Magic Council and rankings go something along the lines of a ranking of magic power, but it's more complicated than I'm willing to explain.} You're welcome**_ , Azu's mental companion said, to which she replied, ' _Thank you.'_

Again, before the council could speak, Azu interrupted. "What an interesting character you have, _O' God on Earthland_ ," she said, adding a good measure of sarcasm to the last phrase. Continuing, she added, "Now before the rest of you start making fools of yourselves in failing to interrogate me, I am here to request access to your libraries and archives, all of them."

"And why would we give such a thing to a child like yourself?" It was an old yet ever composed man that spoke first.

Sighing at his question, especially the "child" part, she replied, "Firstly, I am asking out of courtesy because I could've just taken it if I so pleased. Second, it is in your best interest not to work against me."

"And you think that _you_ could be a threat to _us_?" Another woman asked incredulously. "Even without the strongest mage in Ishgar here, a child your age couldn't possibly be a threat to us."

 _So, I guess I'll be taking the information by force then…_ "Would I be more convincing if I won against the so-called 'God' before me?" Azu asked, ready for her first fight in this new world.

"Of course it would be convincing, but- "

"Good. Now what do you say about a short brawl, _God Serena_?" Azu asked the dramatic man with a hint of excited poison in her voice.

"I sense that you have the potential to entertain even _I_ , so a fight would be _delightful_!" He replied ecstatically, to which Azu grinned. " _However_ , you have no chances of beating _me_. _I_ will be the one enjoying beating you _within_ _an inch of life,_ so _please_ do not disappoint me!" He continued, pretty much half singing.

Cringing at his interesting quirk, Azu replied, "If you so wish a good fight, I will give you just that." Turning to the nine council members, she said, "The nine of you will bear witness to what happens between us and will decide the winner, along with any other actions deemed necessary. Do you all agree?"

All of them turned to each other, then replied back through who appeared to be their leader, "We do not see any problems here. Very well, do as you must."

 _Good to know that life isn't very well valued by people here either, since the highest magical authority said he sees no problems with someone nearly being killed. Typical,_ Azu thought.

Expanding her teleportation ability and simultaneously creating a massive floating island area high above the council's headquarters, she took all eleven of them up to her new creation. In the half-minute that all this took, she diverted some of her attention to scanning all the information about magic and history for what she deemed necessary for this fight, especially regarding her opponent.

 _{God Serena, "Eight-Dragon God Serena"... Uses eight kinds of Dragon Slayer Magic, stemming from his eight implanted Dragon Lacrima. Dragon Slayer Magic… a type of 'Lost Magic' that allows its user to become a dragon and use its abilities. Lacrima… A magic crystalline that can do just about anything if you know how to make it happen. … Other notable 'Slayer' magics… God Slayer Magic and Demon Slayer Magic. … All Slayers can eat their elements to replenish their magic so long as it is not their own magic. …}_

 _Even if implanted into a body, I should still be able to remove and retrieve its power, no? It should be interesting to gain some new powers, especially being able to replenish my strength and energy just by eating certain elements_ , Azu thought. _Additionally, it should really help me in the fight if I take away his main magical abilities first._

Just in time, Azu had finished her mini-analysis and all eleven of them arrived in her giant arena. The council members were in a separate, elevated area of the arena where they could properly judge the fight, while Azu and God Serena were on opposite sides of the arena.

"A _perfect_ setting you have created!" God Serena exclaimed, throwing his arms up once again.

Azu, turning to the council members, said, "When you decide that you are ready to begin judging the fight, give us the call to do so with the gong to your right." At this, all of them agreed on starting on the count of three.

 **Three!**

 _Here's to the beginning,_ Azu thought.

 **Two!**

 _This will be delightful~!_ God Serena thought.

 **One!**

The two combatants took a calming breath in, preparing for the fight that would come.

 **Begin!**

With that, the gong was clearly heard and the two quickly moved in on each other.

It was God Serena who made the first move, shouting **"PURGATORY DRAGON'S BLAZING HELL!"** Punching the air before him, a massive fireball formed around Azu, who estimated the temperature to be about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

 _So, the mages here are dumb enough to shout out their moves before they even happen_ , Azu thought. _I might as well play along until I meet an opponent against whom I absolutely cannot risk losing._

Easily dispelling the heat, Azu looked God Serena in the eyes and calmly said, "I've felt things at least a million times hotter than that, so you'll have to try harder than that." At this, God Serena gained a tick on his forehead, slightly annoyed that his spell was negated so easily.

Just as he was about to counter, Azu spoke up again, "But still, I must thank you. Your magic just might be very helpful to me." With a smile, she lifted her hand and calmly said, **"Steal."**

With that, God Serena could feel one of his elements leaving him. Slightly pausing in disbelief, he looked down to see wisps of magic leaving his body and heading into the direction of… his opponent's hand. Gawking at this development, he looked into her eyes, only to see them calm but burning with excitement.

"Oh, thank you," she said to him. "Now I know the signature of this kind of magic, which makes everything so much easier for me." She raised her hand again and with another calm **"Steal"** , she stole element after element from the supposed God while he was too shocked to even move.

 _Purgatory, Cavern, Sea King, Gale, Pure, Crimson, Wraith, and Black_ , thought Azu, listing off the elements she had just obtained. _Essentially, fire, earth, water, air, light, blood, death, and darkness. Very interesting. I particularly like those last four, but the four elements of nature are no doubt useful in their own rights._

 _Now, a little tweaking with my magic to make it more potent… And how about I make a special 'tribute spell' for the False God before me. There's God Slayer Magic, so I could change the properties of the magic so that when they are all combined, they change from Dragon Slayer to God Slayer Magic,_ she mused. _Sounds like a plan._

At this point, God Serena was still very much disturbed, having felt most of his power vanish. _Who is she?! How could she beat_ _ **me**_ _of all people!_ He thought to himself in his usual dramatic fashion.

Azu began walking up to God Serena calmly, before stopping a few feet away. Then, suddenly, she let loose a very powerful series of magic pulses, creating an aura of sorts. It was so powerful that even the judges in the stands, powerful in their own rights as is, could barely stand it. God Serena, on the other hand, was barely hanging on for dear life now, being crushed by the extremity of the aura.

"Oh, come on… I thought you could provide me with a little something more interesting…" Azu said to God Serena, fake pouting. "Oh, and what was it you said earlier? ' _You have no chances of beating me. I will be the one enjoying beating you within half an inch of death'_ , was it? Hah. As if. Time to finish this, I'd say."

Continuing to keep up the strength of her magical aura, she caused three of the judges to pass out. With a dark smirk, which was returned with a growing face of terror from the usually arrogant man, she raised a single finger and pointed it right at his head. In the style of a God Slayer, she shouted **"FALSE GOD'S FALL!"**

The False God himself cowered in fear as he, in his weakened state, came face to face with his eight elements, somehow magnified and all fused into one, disgustingly powerful spell.

When it finally hit, Azu made sure not to kill him, only knock him out, but more importantly, she had destroyed her entire island. Quickly disintegrating it back into individual subatomic particles, she rearranged them to form atmospheric gases so that all traces of the arena were gone. Meanwhile, the council members and an unconscious God Serena were all falling down to Era, so Azu, reluctantly, teleported them all back to the room they were originally in.

The council members, now all awake, were absolutely speechless. Never before had they seen such ability or magical strength. Additionally, she had beaten the strongest mage on the continent in less than a minute, weakening him to the point where he could no longer be a Wizard Saint at all. Speaking of those-

Interrupting their thoughts, Azu, "So, I think it's pretty clear that I won, no?"

"O-of course. You've won, but there are a few other things we'd like to say," said their leader. "First, for introductions, I am Gran Doma, chairman of the Magic Council. Who might you be?"

"Hello, chairman. I am Azu Yami and before you even think of asking because you're skeptical, I'm 12 years old," Azu replied with a hint of bitterness at the end.

"Hello, Ms. Yami," the chairman greeted in return. "Since I said there were a few things we'd like to say, here's the second: we will accept your request for the access of our archives since you seem quite capable." Azu smiled and nodded in thanks before he continued, "And finally, with your massive show of power, we feel that it would only be right to name you the highest rank among the Wizard Saints, especially seeing as you defeated the former highest ranked mage so quickly."

Azu was slightly surprised that she had received such a high achievement already, but she disregarded that feeling when she was handed a large blue and silver pin with a Cercelée cross in its center. "This is the symbol representing that you are a Wizard Saint," the chairman told her. "Additionally, it's magically attached to you so long as you hold the title, so there is no risk of ever misplacing it and being unable to find it."

Since she was having a rather good day, she decided to return the positivity. "Thank you very much, chairman," she said with a bright smile. "I hope we can cooperate in the future should the time call for it."

"As do we," the chairman responded, smiling equally.

 _I guess I should go back to Crocus now to get some important things all set and then analyze all the information I have access to_ , Azu thought before saying her goodbyes to the council, who in turn said their own as she teleported to the capital of Fiore.

As she arrived, she tried shooting Mavis a mental message. _Hey, Mavis?_

 _Yes, Azu?_ Clearly, it had worked.

 _Today went a lot better than I could have imagined, so I thought I might tell you how it went …_


	3. The Return

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.**

* * *

On a small hilltop of ancient ruins, a slim, muscular young man with spiky blond hair sat with his back facing his black-haired partner, who was standing with his back to the blond man.

"Apparently, they've come back," the blond man said.

"What are you talking about?" The black-haired man replied.

"The core members of Fairy Tail that disappeared 7 years ago," came his answer.

"I'm not interested," the black-haired man calmly said, even though he was lying just a little.

"Don't lie to me, Rogue," the blond man told him. "Especially when you looked up to Natsu that much."

After a pause, Rogue replied, "That was a long time ago."

* * *

 **/ Era /**

"Have you decided yet on the many reform proposals, Sage Org?" A man in the Magic Council's uniform asked the councilman.

"No, Lahar… That still requires more time," Org responded. "More importantly, you all should have heard by now, haven't you?"

"I assume you're talking about Fairy Tail's core members returning?" Lahar inquired while the man on his right, named Doranbolt stood silently, looking at the ground.

Turning his attention to Doranbolt, Lahar asked him, "Looks like that's one load off your chest, right?"

… _I had already discarded them from my thoughts_ , Doranbolt thought, filling with emotions and not once looking up from the ground.

At the lack of a response from Doranbolt, the Sage decided to speak up. "These 7 years have been too quiet," he said. "We've been keeping an eye on Sabertooth, the new powerhouse, without much to worry about. Tartaros hasn't done anything suspicious and nor has what's left of Grimoire Heart. There isn't any new information on Zeref or Acnologia either."

As Lahar and Doranbolt nodded in agreement, the Sage continued, "The most action we've had at the Council in the last 7 years came in the form of a young girl who suddenly became known the strongest mage on the continent, but that happened only right before we learned of the return of Fairy Tail's core members."

At this, Doranbolt looked up. "Do you think they could be related somehow?" He asked.

Neither Lahar nor Org could give an answer to that question, but they all silently agreed that it could not be discarded as a possibility.

* * *

 **/ Magnolia Town /**

Two weeks had passed since the missing Fairy Tail mages had returned and already, there were two rumors spreading rapidly across the countries. The first was of their return and the second was of a mysterious girl suddenly becoming the first ranked Wizard Saint, which was absurd, but nonetheless, a popular rumor.

The members of Fairy Tail who had been stuck on Tenrou Island had not aged at all in the last 7 years, so they still looked the same, but those who stuck with the guild all that time had certainly changed. To make up for all the time lost between them, everyone in the guild partied their hearts out every day and others began mending relations strained by the years lost.

All seemed well…

* * *

"Sabertooth?" Questioned a certain Fire Dragon Slayer named Natsu Dragneel.

"They're currently the strongest mage guild in Fiore," a black-haired fire mage named Romeo Conbolt told Natsu.

"I've never heard of them," said Fairy Tail's Ice-Make mage, Gray Fullbuster.

"They weren't anything special 7 years ago," a Guns Magic user named Alzack Connell told them.

"You're saying they grew suddenly over these last 7 years?" Gray questioned, slightly confused as to how they could've managed such a feat.

"It started when they added five strange, but powerful mages to their ranks," a sand mage named Max Alors told them.

"5 people alone made that much of a difference?" The guild's Celestial Spirit mage, Lucy Heartfilia, asked skeptically while Natsu, seemingly excited, grinned widely and said, "Oh? I like his style."

Before Lucy could reply, the Sky Dragon Slayer, Wendy Marvell, asked, "So what rank does that leave our guild in now?"

"You really want to know?" Nastu's Exceed, Happy, asked Wendy, whose own Exceed, Carla, added, "You haven't heard yet?" Both seemed rather displeased.

Wendy could only be confused because indeed, she had not heard yet, just like the others that hadn't been around for 7 years.

"Absolute last place", "a super tiny, weak little guild", "the weakest guild in Fiore", came the gloomy responses from Romeo, Alzack and his wife, Bisca respectively. At this, Wendy felt bad for asking and immediately apologized.

Disregarding any negativity, Natsu started laughing madly, shouting, "SOUNDS GREAT!" to the surprise of both Lucy and Gray. Continuing as to explain himself, he said, "I'm looking forward to the chance to climb our way higher! How many opportunities like that do you get?! I'M GETTING ALL FIRED UP NOW!"

Gray grumbled audibly at Natsu's antics, but his positivity had lifted everyone else back up.

Not long after, the third master of the guild, Makarov Dreyar, called everyone towards the bar area of their temporary guild building (since the old one was still in ruins for the time being). After an extensive list of statements that seemed rather like excuses, he stated, "My point is that I've decided to retire," much to the shock of those present. The key phrase being _'those present'_. As he tried to announce the Ace of Fairy Tail, Gildarts Clive, as the fifth master (since the title of 'fourth master' was taken by Macao Conbolt, Romeo's father), he found that Gildarts wasn't actually present, but had only left a letter.

It read:

 _To Master and all friends here…_

 _Sorry to say I'm not suitable to be the master…_

 _Well, anyway, selected as the fifth master, I'd like to do three things for you._

 _The first is to acknowledge Laxus Dreyar as a member of Fairy Tail._

 _The second is to nominate Makarov Dreyar to be the sixth master of Fairy Tail._

 _The third is to warmly welcome a possibly questionable newcomer when they decide to show themselves._

 _I'll travel around for some time, and will come back someday._

 _Take care, all of you._

 _And Cana… sorry to leave you again._

 _You can always pray to the card when you miss me and your feelings will reach my card so that I will fly to you._

 _Master, this is your last job:_

 _To lead Fairy Tail to be the Number 1 guild of Fiore!_

Throughout different parts of the letter, feelings were diverse. Makarov was shocked when Gildarts claimed to not be suited for the job of master, which caused the other guild members to laugh. At Laxus's reinstatement to the guild, Makarov got quite pissed at Gildarts but later conceded to him, which gave Lisanna Strauss, a transformation mage, a few laughs. Laxus, on the other hand, was far from his arrogant side, grateful for Gildarts's kind gesture. His followers, the Thunder God Tribe, made up of Freed Justine (who uses Letter Magic and Eye Magic), Evergreen (who uses Fairy Magic, Eye Magic and Letter Magic) and Bickslow (who uses Seith Magic and Eye Magic), were ecstatic at his return, slightly embarrassing the Lightning Dragon Slayer. At Makarov's return to being guild master, Makarov himself was shocked, shouting "ME AGAIN?!" while the rest of the guild laughed as his response. At the mention of a strange someone needing a warm welcome, though, the guild ran silent. No one had a clue who it could possibly be and they couldn't think of a reason why this would need to be mentioned when they were such an accepting and warm guild. They all decided to keep the information in the back of their minds while Makarov resumed reading the letter with some hesitation. At the part directed to Cana, who is the daughter of Gildarts, she ripped up the card given to her, claiming to not need it because she liked the way things were before. At the part where Gildarts mentioned Makarov's "last job", Makarov lost it and decided to never retire again, becoming master for life.

By the end of the letter, people's minds drifted to two topics: First, the mysterious person mentioned vaguely and second, the goal of making Fairy Tail #1.

First thing's first, so…

 **\\\ Flashback \\\**

It was the day that Gildarts had been told he would be the next guild master and he was a little overwhelmed, to say the least. He just needed some rest, so he decided to go back home for a bit, but something caught his eye.

He saw the first master, Mavis Vermillion, on the bridge that he took to get home, but that wasn't what bothered him all that much. Instead, it was the fact that he saw a young girl in all black talking with Mavis animatedly. Gildarts had been told that only those with the Fairy Tail mark could see and interact with the first master, but he had never seen this girl before and assumed that she wasn't a member of the guild. _How can she even see the first master, never mind be so friendly with her?_ Gildarts questioned mentally.

Sensing his presence, the girl in question turned around to face him, smiling. "Hello, Gildarts Clive, Ace of Fairy Tail, newly unofficial fifth master," she said brightly. "Mavis was just telling me that there was a 99.5% chance that you'd refuse the position."

Gildarts, unsure of how to respond, started with "I'm pretty sure she'd be right about that, but how can you even see her, never mind talk with her as you do?"

The girl furrowed a brow at this, asking "What do you mean by 'how can you even see her'? Am I not supposed to able to see Mavis or something?"

Gildarts nodded. "Only Fairy Tail mages are supposed to be able to see or interact with her in that form," he told her.

At this, the girl turned to Mavis and said, "You never told me about this!", faking a pout and using a playful accusing voice.

Mavis, who giggled, said, "Well, it's not like you needed to know that since you can see me just fine. Besides, what difference would it make for you?"

"... You're right, as usual…" the girl replied, feigning sadness and shame. Regaining her happy attitude, she faced Mavis and asked, "Didn't you have something you wanted to tell Gildarts?"

Nodding, Mavis turned to Gildarts, asking "I figure you won't be guild master for very long, but while you are, could you do something to make her feel welcomed when she decides to join?"

 _Why_ wouldn't _she be welcomed at our guild?_ Gildarts wondered. _We take in basically anyone, no matter who they are._ "Sure, I guess, but who even is she?"

Mavis turned to the girl as if to ask if she was ready to introduce herself. Nodding in affirmation, the girl turned to Gildarts and said, "I am Azu Yami, first ranked Wizard Saint, and as for how I'm able to talk to Mavis the way I do, we met on Tenrou Island about two weeks ago while it was still undetected and missing."

Gildarts, slightly shocked that this was the girl that the rumors were talking about, turned to Mavis looking for confirmation.

Smiling at him, Mavis said, "She is who she says she is, and she's the one who brought the island back up and out of the dark, pretty much saving all of you."

"Don't put it like that…" Azu mumbled, blushing and staring at the ground embarrassed.

At this, Gildarts was even more shocked, but getting over it, he decided that the guild really owed this girl, Azu. "Of course, if she saved us, it is necessary for us to welcome her warmly when she decides to join us," he said. Turning to Azu, he bowed slightly and thanked her, embarrassing her once again.

Both girls said their farewells to Gildarts before vanishing like they never existed. He could only be left with the thought: _What an interesting girl…_

 **\\\ End Flashback \\\**

Most in the guild had heard of rumors about a mysterious girl who suddenly became the top-ranked Wizard Saint, but the reference to a 'questionable newcomer' by Gildarts added another mystery. Nobody knew what to make of the two mysteries that had come in quick succession, so most resorted to storing it in the back of their minds for later reference.

Turning to the second topic at hand, the telepathy mage, Warren Rocko, laughed and said, "Gildarts said to be No. 1 of Fiore…"

Max replied, "It's really too greedy, don't you think so?"

A woman with scarlet hair, Erza Scarlet, walked up to them and said, "Nope. I think positivity is great."

"It might've been possible 7 years ago, but everything's changed," Max told her.

Alzack, Bisca and their child Asuka picked up where he left off, stating, "Besides Sabertooth", "Blue Pegasus and Lamia Scale have both grown into massive guilds, much stronger than 7 years ago" and a squeaked "large guilds", respectively.

A few others chimed in saying that even though the guild had it core members back, they hadn't strengthened at all in the last 7 years, leaving them quite a lot weaker than the times permitted. Such a weakened state, by comparison, would take quite some time for them to make up for, but then Romeo interrupted.

"We can't and don't want to afford 'more time'," he started. "There's only one way for us to become No. 1 in no time!"

With that, there were many angry gasps from the mages who were not on Tenrou Island, while those who were trapped for 7 years were utterly confused. The mages that had experienced this 'one way' were apparently very adamant about not doing it again, but that didn't help the confusion of others.

Eventually, Romeo explained that there was a new festival held for the past 7 years known as the Grand Magic Games where the guilds from around Fiore gather and compete. The winner of the Games would become the number one guild in the country, so this was the quick way to reach Gildarts's wish.

"But… I doubt we'll be able to do too well…" Makarov said quietly.

"The winner gets a bonus of 30,000,000 Jewels!" Romeo added. At this, Makarov was instantly sold, eager to win the games.

With the Games being held in three months, the members of Fairy Tail all got busy with their preparations for training.

* * *

Two weeks prior, upon arriving in Crocus, Azu found a bench and sat down to do some analysis of her newly acquired information.

 _For now, the only things I want to know are how to live life here, the organization of mages into guilds and stuff like that, information on the guilds and their mages, and I guess my history lesson can wait until later…_

 _Life in Fiore:_

 _{Currency, since money means a lot… Jewel, which is worth 1 USD per 100 Jewel. Clothing… People here apparently wear whatever they want, literally, so it doesn't matter who you are. Cosplaying like a moron might just be your desire and no one would really care. Great, now I'll have to deal with that… whatever. Where to get clothing… A place called 'Heart Kreuz' seems popular with girls and they have a store near here, so I can go there to get myself some local clothing. Food… everything is food in a way, apparently. Mannerism… No one cares too much as long as you're not a complete asshole.}_

 _Organization of Mages and Guilds:_

 _{Types of guilds… Legal Guilds, Dark Guilds and Independent Guilds. A Legal Guild is one that has been approved and registered by the Magic Council. A Dark Guild has not been approved by the Magic Council and is treated as a criminal organization. An Independent Guild is a mix of both, where it has not been approved nor registered by the Magic Council as a Legal Guild would be, but at the same time, it is not considered a criminal organization like a Dark Guild. Apparently, Independent Guilds can do as they like as long as the Magic Council doesn't disapprove of their actions. Note: There are not only magic guilds but also merchant, mercenary, treasure hunter, bandit, workmen, combat and industrial guilds among others. … The Interguild Dispute Interdiction Treaty forbids acts of aggression between guilds, although some guilds choose to ignore this. … Dark Guilds and Independent Guilds can become approved and registered over time and Legal and Independent Guilds can become Dark Guilds should their actions warrant such a move.}_

 _Notable Guilds and Mages in Fiore:_

 _{Fairy Tail, Sabertooth, Lamia Scale, Blue Pegasus, Mermaid Heel, Quatro Cerberus, Raven Tail, Crime Sorcière, and the Dark Guilds of the Balam Alliance, Oración Seis, Grimoire Heart, and Tartaros. Note: Oración Seis was defeated by Fairy Tail before they were trapped on Tenrou Island and are not imprisoned by the Magic Council. Note: Grimoire Heart no longer exists as all their members are either dead, inactive, or have defected to Crime Sorcière.}_

 _Personalities of members of Dark Guilds should be noted, seeing as they might be viewed as irrational in the future otherwise, even if they are mildly rational in their situations._

 _Oración Seis: {_

 _~ Brain/Zero - Guild master with two personalities, although both are arrogant to no end. The first personality is the one he usually has, which loves fame and attention. The second personality is one that loves destruction, is much more merciless, and is actually feared by the first personality. The rest of his guild currently (moderately) hates him, now knowing that they were used by him to seal away his second personality._

 _~ Klodoa - A magical weapon used by Brain through which Darkness Magic is performed. Darkness Magic is that which manipulates and controls destructive Dark Magic._

 _~ Midnight - His real name is Macbeth and is the adoptive son of Brain. He is very laid back, but also very sadistic and cold-hearted at times. He uses Darkness Magic and Reflector, which is magic that enables its user to twist and distort almost anything, other than living things._

 _~ Cobra - His real name is Erik and is the Poison Dragon Slayer. He used to be much like the others in his guild, arrogant and complacent, but with his time in prison, he's become more understanding yet more irritable._

 _~ Cubellios - The former pet snake of Erik, who is now known as Kinana, a human. She was actually a human to begin with but was turned into a snake by a now-deceased mage. Currently, she is an employee of Fairy Tail and not working as a mage._

 _~ Angel - Her real name is Sorano. She believes that all humans are impure and that living as a human might as well be a sin, hence her obsession with angels, seeing them as perfection. She uses Celestial Spirit Magic (a magic that calls Celestial Spirits from their own separate world to aid their summoner) and Angel Magic (a magic using 'Angel Coins' to summon angels at the cost of some years from the caster's lifespan)._

 _~ Racer - His real name is Sawyer and he's absolutely obsessed with speed. He can be extremely dedicated and passionate when he sees fit, but he can be cruel nonetheless. Relating to his obsession with speed, he uses Time Magic (to slow down the time of others around him) and Vehicle Magic (which allows him to summon vehicles and alter their properties)._

 _~ Hoteye - His real name is Richard Buchanan and is seemingly the strangest of the bunch. Rather than being cruel and sadistic, he's now kindhearted and obsessed with love and goodness. He uses Earth Magic (that which softens the earth) and Eye Magic (Heaven's Eye, which allows him to see long distances and through solid objects)._

 _}_

 _Grimoire Heart: {Of those that are powerful and still actually alive:_

 _~ Bluenote Stinger - The most powerful mage of Grimoire Heart other than its master prior to leaving the guild, he is now a part of Orochi's Fin, a rival guild of Lamia Scale. He is usually anxious for battle and very confident in his abilities, considering fighting a way to keep the body in shape, (not that he's wrong in that sense). He uses Gravity Magic, which is exactly what it sounds like, and is practically a master of it._

 _~ Ultear Milkovich - Defected from the guild and is currently in Crime Sorcière._

 _~ Meredy Milkovich - Defected from the guild and is currently in Crime Sorcière._

 _~ Rustyrose - Currently obsessed with reviving Grimoire Heart, he's not in the best state of mind. That aside, he is a user of Lost Magic, the Arc of Embodiment, which allows its user to create and use basically anything it can imagine. In other words, it's useless to me because I can do the same thing without magic…_

 _~ Kain Hikaru - He's nowhere on the continent, so he can be ignored… However, his use of Black Magic, especially his doll that could control people with only a single strand of hair, is interesting._

 _~ Capricorn - After somehow being possessed by Zoldeo, a now-deceased member of Grimoire Heart, Capricorn has returned to being a Celestial Spirit and is now under Lucy Heartfilia, a Fairy Tail mage._

 _}_

 _Tartaros:_

 _{Unknown… Headquarters are located on a giant magical cube called… Cube. Unoriginal, but I'll need to personally visit them, I guess…}_

 _Crime Sorcière: {_

 _~ Jellal Fernandes - He deeply regrets his past, even though he knew he was being manipulated, and co-founded Crime Sorcière in an attempt to atone for his sins by destroying Dark Guilds. He uses Heavenly Body Magic (a type of magic that uses the properties of astronomical objects such as extreme speed and destruction), Though Projections, Darkness Magic, Fire Magic, Water Magic, Wind Magic, Earth Magic, Telepathy and Telekinesis._

 _~ Ultear Milkovich - Formerly part of the Magic Council, she possessed a young Jellal and used him in an attempt to revive Zeref (Note to self: Research "Zeref"). She too co-founded the guild to atone for her deep and numerous sins. She is a Lost Magic user, using the Arc of Time, which can alter the "time" of anything. For instance, she can send something to the future, which causes its move at extremely high speeds to a new position, also taking into account all future possibilities, which creates many different versions of the original object. She can also send things to the past, returning them to the state they used to be in. She can also use Telekinesis, Possession Magic, Magic Sword (for close combat), Ice-Make (which allows users to make different things out of ice from their hands), Transformation Magic (which allows users to change their appearance and/or abilities), Thought Projections and Telepathy._

 _~ Meredy Milkovich - The adoptive daughter of Ultear Milkovich and another Lost Magic user. She uses Maguilty Sense, which allows the senses of different people to be connected and allows for the manipulation of the senses. Additionally, if the senses of two or more people are connected, should one of them die, all of the connected people will die as well._

 _}_

 _Powerful Mages/Magics in Legal Guilds:_

 _Quatro Cerberus:_

 _{Bacchus Groh - Nicknamed "The Drunk Falcon" for his great enjoyment of alcohol, he is a master of Palm Magic, which focuses power on the palms of one's hands. Combined with his mastery of Chop Hanging Palm, a martial art of mostly palm strikes, he is a strong opponent.}_

 _Mermaid Heel:_

 _{Kagura Mikazuchi - She is mostly calm and stoic, a collected and rational person overall. She is an expert of Gravity Magic and is a master of swordsmanship, able to defeat or cut through almost anything without even unsheathing her sword, Archenemy. Note: Dresses like a rich Japanese girl – (again with the Japanese relations with this world...)}_

 _Blue Pegasus: {_

 _~ Ichiya Vandalay Kotobuki - While an absolutely disgusting man who always says "Men…" regardless of reasonability or rationale, he is a genius when it comes to Perfume Magic. He can do just about anything with his perfumes, although that is his only advantage. Everything else about him is a weakness and frankly, he's a coward._

 _~ Jenny Realight - … Very confident in her sex appeal… A user of Machina Soul, a kind of Take Over Magic, which allows a user to gain the abilities of a certain kind of entity by 'taking them over', hence its name. Her particular Take Over Magic allows her to use the properties of machines._

 _~ Hibiki Lates - Even though he's not particularly strong, he is still very useful with his Archive Magic, which allows him to find and transfer information, or even use screens as offensive and defensive weapons._

 _}_

 _Lamia Scale: {_

 _~ Jura Neekis - The fifth-ranked Wizard Saint with a very humble personality, he uses Earth Magic. While relatively simple, his magic is very powerful because he is able to take the ground, no matter how little, and make it as hard as iron. Large quantities of such a material would be devastating to most opponents, hence his title as the fifth-ranked Wizard Saint. (Note to self: research the other Wizard Saints.)_

 _~ Lyon Vastia - An Ice-Make mage, he can create both animate and inanimate beings with his magic. He also knows a little Snow Magic and Ice Magic, Blizzard and Iced Shell respectively, the latter of which requires the caster to forfeit their life as a human to seal away something in ice forever._

 _~ Sherry Blendy - While the mage herself isn't so great, the potential of her magic is. Doll Attack is magic that can animate and control anything except for humans. The control is almost absolute, with the exception of a Celestial Spirit being recalled if their summoner tries hard enough._

 _~ Yuka Suzuki - Mage aside, the idea of canceling out magic with a magic called 'Wave' seems interesting. While he only uses his hands for it, if I can use it with my entire body, it would surely be very useful._

 _~ Sherria Blendy - The Sky God Slayer and cousin of Sherry Blendy (even though their last names are the same?)_

 _}_

 _Sabertooth: {_

 _~ Jiemma - A complete asshole and somehow the guild master of the strongest guild in Fiore, he is very physically powerful despite his age and is adept at Blast Magic, which can produce both blasts and shockwaves._

 _~ Minerva Orland - The daughter of Jiemma, she is the strongest mage in Sabertooth, although her personality belongs in Dark Guild. She uses Territory, a magic that revolves around the manipulation of space. She can transport things and people instantly, change the properties of space, et cetera. The magic's only limits are the person's imagination and ability._

 _~ Sting Eucliffe - The White Dragon Slayer, who has an Exceed named Lector._

 _~ Rogue Cheney - The Shadow Dragon Slayer, who has an Exceed named Frosch._

 _~ Orga Nanagear - The Lightning God Slayer. Note: Likes singing but is pretty bad._

 _~ Rufus Lore - Uses Memory-Make magic, which allows him to materialize anything he has in his memory, and Telekinesis. Memory-Make is useful, yes, but not as potent as Rustyrose's Arc of Embodiment._

 _~ Yukino Agria - The younger sister of Angel/Sorano (Oración Seis), she is a Celestial Spirit mage in possession of two of the Gold Keys (Pisces and Libra) as well as the Black Key of Ophiuchus._

 _}_

 _Raven Tail: {_

 _Apparently, Raven Tail was created as the 'Anti-Fairy Tail Guild'._

 _~ Obra - A little green… creature? Regardless, not much is known about him other than that he has the ability to cancel out magic completely, no matter how powerful (we'll see about that…). It's useful in the same was as Yuka Suzuki's Wave Magic, but a lot more potent and dangerous in this case._

 _~ Kurohebi - He uses Mimic Magic, which is exactly as it sounds: He can mimic/copy the magic of others and use it as his own. I should try this out instead of just stealing the magic - it might actually make fights more interesting…_

 _}_

 _Fairy Tail: {_

 _~ Mavis Vermillion - She uses Illusion Magic, the Three Great Magics of Fairy Tail, Thought Projections, Telepathy, Black Magic and the Black Arts due to being cursed by Ankhseram Black Magic, also known as the Contradictory Curse. This Contradictory Curse causes the opposite effect of what is wanted by its carrier in regards to life and death. If the person values life, then all will die around them. If the person loves another deeply without any wavering, then that person will die upon receiving said love._

 _~ Makarov Dreyar - The current guild master and sixth-ranked Wizard Saint, he uses Giant Magic (effectively making him a giant), Maximum Defense Seal, Light Magic, Fairy Law (one of the Three Great Magics of Fairy Tail), Fire Magic, Ice Magic, Wind Magic, Telepathy, Dispelling Magic and Requip Magic (which is basically 'Re-equip Magic', meaning the caster can change their possessions on hand without having them physically on hand). Additionally, he can sort of fly, but not really. A shame, since I can fly no problem…_

 _~ Gildarts Clive - Also known as 'The Ace of Fairy Tail', he uses Crush Magic, which is extremely powerful. It can crack magic and physical objects alike into pieces, nullifying magic and destroying virtually anything._

 _~ Laxus Dreyar - The grandson of Makarov Dreyar, he is the Lightning Dragon Slayer._

 _~ Erza Scarlet - Nicknamed 'Titania', she is the strongest female mage in Fairy Tail and a master of Requip Magic._

 _~ Mirajane Strauss - Formerly nicknamed 'The Demon', she uses Satan Soul, a form of Take Over Magic that involves demons._

 _~ Elfman Strauss - The younger brother of Mirajane, he uses Beast Soul, a form of Take Over Magic that involves, well… beasts._

 _~ Lisanna Strauss - The younger sister of both Mirajane and Elfman, she uses Animal Soul, a form of Take Over Magic that involves the more passive animals._

 _~ Natsu Dragneel - The Fire Dragon Slayer, who has an Exceed named Happy._

 _~ Gajeel Redfox - The Iron Dragon Slayer, who has an Exceed named Pantherlily._

 _~ Wendy Marvell - The Sky Dragon Slayer, and cute… and she has an Exceed named Carla._

 _~ Lucy Heartfilia - A Celestial Spirit mage in possession of… 10 Gold Keys?! So, between her and Yukino, the two of them have all of the keys of the Zodiac…_

 _~ Freed Justine - An expert of Letter Magic (the usage of Runes)_

 _~ Porlyusica - Elusive, hates humans, and a wonderful Medicinal Advisor._

 _}_

 _The Wizard Saints: (only those above Jura and Makarov because the rest seem uninteresting) {_

 _Along with God Serena, the four highest ranked Wizard Saints were known as the 'Four Gods of Ishgar' and were often referred to as 'not human'._

 _~ Draculos Hyberion, second-ranked - Somehow having Romanian influence without Romania actually existing on this world, he uses Vampire Magic, allowing him to paralyze a target and then control them._

 _~ Wolfheim, third-ranked - Not too much is known about him, but he can transform into a gargantuan beast that is presumably very powerful - enough so to make him the third-ranked Wizard Saint._

 _~ Warrod Sequen, fourth-ranked - One of the founders of Fairy Tail and over a century old, he is a master of Green Magic, which allows him to control nature itself._

 _}_

 _Under a new file for the Wizard Saints was me, but there was only one word other than my name and age: 'Unknown'._

 _For Zeref's file, it would be best not to use the Council's files because they might be too inaccurate, considering the person is regarded by most as dead, so I'll have to do my own filtered and limited search…_

 _Zeref:_

 _{Nicknamed 'The Black Wizard' and called the strongest and most evil mage of all time, he is 'immortal' and currently over 400 years old. Like Mavis, he is under the effects of the Contradictory Curse and… oh? This is interesting: He's actually the emperor of the Alvarez Empire, known as Emperor Spriggan. Even more interestingly, his full name is Zeref Dragneel and he is the older brother of Natsu Dragneel (Fairy Tail). He is a master of all the Black Arts and is able to use Living Magic, a long-lost ancient magic that 'breathes life' into an object. He can also use Immobilization Magic to freeze time for those he chooses to. Additionally, he can use Black Magic, Fire Magic, Telepathy and Enchantments. Fun Fact!: He wants to die pretty badly.}_

 _That should be enough, although Zeref really does sound like an interesting person…_

Finished, Azu looked skywards, noticing the day had begun to end. _It's been, what, five years since I last slept?_ She thought to herself. _Maybe I should start resting again since it seems pretty safe here, especially with no militaries and assassins trailing me… For once, I've found peace, if only for a little while…_

* * *

 **/ Unknown Location /**

Back with the blond man and Rogue, they resumed their conversation.

"Man, talking about 7 years ago really makes me nostalgic… I was this small back then," the blond man said, waving his hand at a ridiculously short height, obviously exaggerating. "Ah, you were Gajeel's apprentice back then, right? Man… Gajeel was really scary!"

"Don't cling to the past, Sting," Rogue said. "Those people were not there on the path we took."

Just then, a man with a bow ran up to them shouting, "I FOUND YOU~~!"

As the two on the hill turned to face him, he shouted "DIEEEEE!" and shot an arrow at a minimal range for maximum speed.

However, the blond man, named Sting, managed to catch the arrow regardless of its speed and, to the shock of the archer, began to eat it whole. Spitting in the direction or the archer and releasing a little magic, Sting blew away a large area. _S...So it was them… they're…_ _ **the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth**_ _… the White Dragon, Sting, and Rogue, the Shadow Dragon,_ the archer thought as he filled with fear to the brim.

Screaming and running for his life, the man left the two Dragon Slayers behind. As he ran, Sting called out, mockingly asking, "Are you going to just abandon your comrades? You're really scum," to which Rogue responded, "They're a Dark Guild after all." Behind them were countless bodies knocked cold, presumably the man's 'comrades' that he 'left behind'.

With that, the two Dragon Slayers walked away casually with their Exceeds, Lector and Frosch, discussing whether or not they'd like to challenge the members of Fairy Tail they had looked up to all those years ago.

What would happen if they got the chance to do so?


	4. Black Blood

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail**

* * *

 _ **Oi! Get the hell up!**_ Came the voice from within.

 _Hmm?..._

 _ **You've been asleep for almost two weeks you useless shit!**_

 _Well, that's… wonderful._ Sighing at how long she had been asleep, Azu couldn't help but also ask the voice, _So… have you decided what you want to be in relation to myself yet?_

 _ **I'll be deciding later on**_ , it replied. _**I only tried to wake you up because you seem to have been requested by someone.**_

 _Is it Mavis?_ She asked, to which she was answered with an ' _ **Indeed**_ ' from the voice.

 _Thanks, I guess._ , she told the voice. Noticing its presence disappear, she continued to herself. _I guess I should go meet up with her and see what she wants._

Directing the message to Mavis's magic signature, she asked, _Sorry for not being able to respond for a while, Mavis, but was there something you wanted to tell me?_

With almost no delay, she got a response of _Hello, Azu. Can you come to Magnolia today at some point? That's where the guild is, so it might be better if you got to know the town before joining._

 _Well, you make a fair point, so I'll be over when I can,_ Azu replied. _I want to skirt around the guild for now, though, just in case._

 _That's fine, but there's just one person I'd like you to meet. Would that be fine?_ Mavis asked.

 _I guess?..._

After getting ready for the day, Azu teleported to the location of Magnolia Town she remembered from those maps she had found in Hargeon Town.

Ending up on a hill that overlooked the town, she scanned for Mavis's magic signature, which she found quickly. She had only just woken up after being asleep for two weeks, so she decided to walk there to stretch her legs. She didn't mind walking at all because the new clothes she had gotten from Heart Kreuz (still just pitch-black shirt and pants) were extremely comfortable.

Walking through Magnolia, Azu passed many different shops and restaurants along with a few major things like a river and locations that would make for good living space when she eventually, hopefully, would move here. Eventually, she found her way to Mavis, who was waiting for her on a bridge over a stream.

Turning to Azu, she said, "The town was nice, no?"

Naturally, this implied that Mavis knew that Azu had walked through the town or had at least surveyed it, to which Azu replied, "Your senses are quite good, but that should be expected from someone with over a century of experience. And yes, the town was quite nice. I even found a few places to move in when necessary."

Smiling at the response she received, Mavis asked, "So, how much have you learned about this world so far?"

 _Well… I didn't quite say that I'm from another world, but I guess I implied it_ , Azu thought. _I might as well just go with it because it's not like she's wrong._ "I know things like geography and language along with a list of powerful mages and magic on this continent. Outside of this continent, I only know of a powerful country known as the 'Alvarez Empire', headed by Zeref, who seems to have ties to this continent," she said. "I don't intend on researching this world to no end because that would make my life here boring. It's always more interesting when there are things you don't know. Speaking of which, I still don't have a clue about history in this world."

Noticing that Mavis began looking a little sad at the mention of Zeref, Azu asked, "Did you know Zeref?"

"Yes… Yes, I did," she replied after a pause. "He's actually the one who taught me and the other founders of Fairy Tail magic."

At this, Azu was rather surprised. _The supposed 'darkest and most evil mage' taught the founders of Fairy Tail, which includes the fourth-ranked Wizard Saint._ Realizing another thing, she asked Mavis, "Does he have anything to do with why you both have the Contradictory Curse?"

Remembering that fateful day, Mavis beamed at Azu saying, "Yes, it was the result of using an incomplete version of a spell he taught me, but it was well worth it because it saved a friend!"

Smiling at her positivity, she replied, "Your guild really is something, Mavis…"

"Of course it is!" She happily replied, "But I asked you to come for another reason. Two, actually."

Interested, Azu raised an eyebrow as to ask Mavis to continue, which she did. "Firstly, I would like you to meet the incoming fifth master of Fairy Tail."

"Wait, so even though the third master is still alive, he retired?" Azu asked.

"He feels like his time is up as the master of the guild, although it's really more like he doesn't want to deal with the paperwork anymore," Mavis explained, continuing as she caught a slightly confused expression from Azu, who wasn't quite sure why someone would quit over paperwork. "The guild is always destroying things left and right on missions, so it's a lot of paperwork from the Magic Council and also the guild always gets the bills to pay for damages."

"So, you've harbored a very destructive yet caring group," Azu remarked. "Quite interesting…"

Mavis smiled, continuing, "But back to the fifth, I don't think he'll want the job…" After pausing, the asked Azu, "Have you heard of Gildarts?"

"The one they call the Ace of Fairy Tail?" Azu asked, to which she received a series of nods from Mavis. "Then yes, I have. Was he the one chosen for the position of fifth master?"

"You'd be correct there, but I think there's also one more question you're forgetting to ask?" Mavis teased Azu, practically begging her to ask the question she had only just thought of.

"Is he even the kind of person that's a leader? I mean, sure, he's the strongest in the guild, but does that mean that he'll be a good leader for the guild?" Azu asked.

"And that's exactly why he won't want the job," Mavis told her. "I predict at least a 99.5% chance that he'll refuse the position because he sees himself as unqualified. But Fairy Tail always makes things work somehow, so he'll be able to figure out something to set everything straight."

Smiling once again at Mavis's antics, Azu asked, "I guess I could meet him even though you still haven't told me why, but what about this second thing you wanted to talk to me about?"

"I've learned about a new event that takes place in Fiore that started the year our core members disappeared," Mavis started. "It's called the 'Grand Magic Games' and it's where different guilds come together and compete. You're currently living in Crocus, right?"

 _So… it's sort of like the Olympics_ , Azu thought. She gave a nod, at which point Mavis continued, "The Games are being held there and I think you'd enjoy watching." Seeing a skeptical look from Azu, she quickly added, "You won't have to show yourself and knowing you, you probably have a way of staying invisible and undetectable."

 _Naturally, both abilities are incredibly useful for what I used to do, so naturally, I created abilities for both to the highest of my abilities_ , Azu thought. "I'll come along with you, so just tell me where to meet you and I'll join up with you," she replied to Mavis with a smile.

"Of course," Mavis said back, "but since Gildarts is right there, we might as well greet him."

Azu, turning around with a smile, greeted Gildarts, "Hello, Gildarts Clive, Ace of Fairy Tail, newly unofficial fifth master."

…

 _Couldn't you have made that any less embarrassing for me, Mavis?..._ Azu thought after Gildarts had finally left.

* * *

 _Mavis eventually told me that the games were in three months_ , Azu thought, _but only after deciding to tease me for almost half an hour…_

Sighing at her undeserved punishment, she continued, _I might as well train for those next few months and get into the style of fights here. After all, I'm not used to fighting against magic at this point and some practice would certainly help. Maybe I could practice on some Dark Guilds, although I'll have to look for something powerful outside of Fiore due to the lack of powerful guilds in this country… other than Tartaros, but I'll deal with them later._

 _I guess I'll have to make up a name for my analysis ability for the sake of seeming at least somewhat normal here, so I guess I can just call it_ _ **'Deus Explicatio'**_ _, representing God's Analysis, the ultimate information collection._

 _Here goes nothing:_ **"Deus Explicatio,"** she said calmly, and upon realizing that she needed to be more specific with verbal commands for things to make sense in this world, she continued, **"Dark Guilds of Ishgar."** Of course, she could do as she liked within Ishgar because she represented the strongest mage on the continent, but action on any other country might as well have been a declaration of war, which she wasn't particularly willing to take the blame for just yet.

She was presented with a mass of information, from which she could easily pick out the most powerful guild in each country.

 _{Royal Dragon:_

 _Located in the Pergrande Kingdom… The strongest Dark Guild in their country… Mostly comprised of Dragon Slayers created from implanted Dragon Lacrima… About 50 Dragon Slayers total… Their Dragon Lacrimas were all stolen, which was the only way to concentrate such a powerful force… This guild should be fun… }_

 _{Silver Achelous:_

 _Located in Isvan… The strongest Dark Guild in their country… Their guild leader is the God of Water for whom the guild is named... The God of Water seems to have been corrupted by the second in command, a woman known as 'Leviathan'... Leviathan was formerly the disciple of Achelous… She knows a good deal of powerful God Slayer Magic… The rest of the guild isn't so great, but this should be fun nonetheless… }_

 _{No Dark Guilds exist in Veronica… The Prince is the closest thing to evil… Can't attack the Prince… That would start a war and a massive controversy… Not going to do that yet… }_

 _{Mot Spine:_

 _Located in Seven… A ridiculously creative name for a country… Again, the strongest Dark Guild in their country, despite only having seven members… What a coincidence… Source of strength… All seven are legendary assassins in their country, proficient with and without magic. … They have never failed a mission, no matter how difficult… There will always be a first… }_

 _{Flaming Pine:_

 _Located in Bosco… All of the following Dark Guilds will the be the strongest of their nation, which includes this one… Infamous for their powerful fire mages… Pretty weak in comparison to the others mentioned so far… Maybe I'll start with this one to get warmed up… }_

 _{Amarok Fang:_

 _Located in Iceberg… Known for their Giant and Snow/Ice Magics and their ferociously murderous nature… They rarely work in teams… Some members kill for fun… This seems like one of the nastier guilds, even among Dark Guilds… }_

 _{Heaven Horn:_

 _Located in Stella… Has only one human member… The other members are Fourth Generation Dragon Slayers… … Fourth Generation Dragon Slayers… Artificial beings created from Dragon Lacrima and pure magic power. … So, this will be a little ridiculous, but it'll help in practicing using my magical and technological parts together… }_

 _{Blended Note:_

 _Located in Minstrel… All members are required to be proficient in music-based magic… Music Magic seems easy to counter, but, if used skillfully, can be very hard to counter… This will be good practice for concentration, I guess… }_

 _{Arcadia Leaf:_

 _Located in Midi… The guild leader is a proficient user of Sun Magic… … Sun Magic… Magic that turns power from the Sun into an extremely powerful and destructive force. … He has taught most of his guild the basics of Sun Magic… Interesting?... }_

 _{Skorpion:_

 _Located in Desierto… Most of the guild uses some kind of poison… Many have it as their type of magic… Some carry weapons laced with poison… Everyone in the guild is very good at hand-to-hand combat… I could research poisons there… }_

 _{Emerald Sword:_

 _Located in Joya… Just a bunch of really good thieves… Most members use some form of telekinesis or memory altering… They prefer physical weapons over magic… A warmup round, I guess… }_

 _{Pallas Spring:_

 _Located in Bellum… Led by the God of Warcraft… They excel in deadly technology… Almost constantly at war with other Dark Guilds… Over 300 members… All weaknesses are taken care of by technology, leaving members with 'no weaknesses'... Interesting… }_

 _{Vitium:_

 _Located in Sin… Unironically, the nation's strongest Dark Guild is the Seven Deadly Sins themselves… I'd like to keep this one a mystery, so the more power they have, the more fun I have… }_

 _{Black Cloud:_

 _Located in Caelum… A smattering of some of the strongest dark mages from across the continent… Many rival the Ten Wizard Saints in terms of sheer magic power… The guild master rivals the power of the Four Gods of Ishgar… This would be a good warmup for a fight against the gods… }_

 _{Zünder:_

 _Located in Enca… Often assist other powerful Dark Guilds… Mostly use explosive forms of magic… The guild as a whole is proficient at making and using magic bombs in the forms of pure magic and lacrima alike… Should be interesting… }_

 _That's 14 Dark Guilds in the time of about 12 weeks, so I guess I could do one or two a week before the Games roll around_ , Azu thought. _I'll start with Emerald Sword and work my way up. Speaking of which, I have plenty of energy after sleeping for two weeks…_

 _Off to Joya, it is!_ She mentally shouted in mock determination.

* * *

Now that she was in Joya, Azu really wanted to leave as soon as possible.

 _It's so unnaturally happy here…_ she thought. _It's enough to literally make me sick. Well, no wonder the country is called 'Joya'._

Quickly scanning Joya for the greatest presences of magic and 'darkness', which would lead her to the guild she was looking for, she found that she didn't actually have to look far. Emerald Sword was based in the slums of the capital city, which Azu was currently in.

Fighting in the capital of a country might cause some problems, but if she could finish quickly, then maybe she'll get off without anything too terrible happening.

 _Since I'm in a crowded city, I won't be able to use destructive magic, like the Dragon Slayer Magic I stole from God Serena,_ Azu reasoned. _I guess I'll just practice dodging magic for a while and just use my fists until it has to get ugly._

Walking a few steps, she realized something: _I should probably hide my face…_ She thought. _I don't want my actions here to become associated with that of Fairy Tail when I eventually join. If I hide my face, I won't be recognizable in that way, but then again, how many overpowered 12-year-olds exist in this world?... If hiding my face isn't enough, I'll deal with it later, I guess..._ After some experimentation, she found that by blanketing her face with Wraith Dragon Slayer Magic, which looked like a black haze, her face could no longer be seen above her mouth.

 _This'll do_ , she reasoned. _I'll use it when I'm close enough to the target._

With that, she began her walk towards Emerald Sword, which was about a mile away. Eventually, she reached the poorer districts of the capital city, where she found a more manageable amount of happiness radiating from the citizens.

Following the concentration of magic hiding somewhere within the district, she eventually ended up in front of a large building with a sign that read "Serward Model".

 _Nice try, but that's just the letters of 'Emerald Sword' rearranged in an easily decipherable way,_ Azu thought.

Dramatically knocking down the front door, she made her entrance with her black mask on.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"Who do you think you are?!"

"The fuck d'you think you're doing?"

And many more responses came, many of which were incredibly vulgar and slurred due to the sheer amount of alcohol being consumed. Azu smiled slightly at their idiocy, but due to her black mask, the thieves perceived it as a twisted smile.

Spotting the swords that were strewn all over the hall, she found a wonderful way to instigate them into attacking her full on. "Hello there," she said, picking up one of the swords and throwing it straight for the head of one of the drunk mages at a threatening speed, but not one that would scare them off.

In the end, it didn't pierce his head since someone else deflected it, but it certainly served its purpose.

"Now you're really asking for it!" A woman in the back shouted.

War cries emanated across the hall, leading to most of the Dark Guild heading for Azu with swords drawn.

As one mage tried to stab Azu in the abdomen, she dodged to the left swiftly, only to be met with another two swords, to which she promptly leaped back.

With her back to some of the enemy, they took full advantage, having six quick runners charge straight for her from behind. Their enemy turning around apparently didn't occur to them… With the first one, it was obvious that his form wasn't solid, so a kick to the shin was enough for Azu to trip him up. For the second one, she simply gave him a hard punch to the side of the head, knocking him out cold. The third and fourth tried going together, only to be thrown into each other by Azu. Coincidentally, the third one ended up stabbing the fourth in the heart because he lost control of his sword when he was thrown. The fifth and sixth were far more careful and managed to keep her busy for a solid ten minutes while other mages tried stabbing her at the same time.

With each further lunge, she only had to dodge and keep dodging, never allowing her focus on all the swords in the room waver. It was a difficult task, keeping track of 1,000 swords at all time, moving or not. To her credit, she was slowly finding it easier to dodge and keep track at the same time. This was her purpose for coming here, anyway - to practice dodging and concentration.

Eventually, the dark mages got fed up with the girl's quick movements and evasions and started using their magic. A group of a dozen mages lined themselves up and each picked up ten swords with their telekinesis.

 _Well, this will be interesting_ , Azu thought. _How will I do, dodging 120 swords at once?_ _We're about to see, I guess._

All at once, the mages released the 120 swords, which Azu began dodging with little effort. But that only lasted until about the fiftieth sword. At that point, she began struggling a little more, and by the hundredth sword, she was close to getting some cuts.

 _Well damn, this is hard…_ She started, but stopped upon getting two gaping cuts across each of her arms.

Before long, her blood was seeping out of them, much to the horror of the dark mages.

"What, you don't like my blood?" Azu asked them innocently.

"... black blood…" One of them whispered in horror.

"Am I seeing things?" Another asked quietly.

With much whispering among them and a wider smile at their reaction from Azu, one of them finally screamed, "SHE'S A DEMON!".

Breaking out into a full grin, Azu made up a name for her dual swords on the spot: **"Swords of Thanatos."**

With that, two black swords about a meter long appeared in her outstretched hands, adding to the fear already present in the guild members.

"Playtime's over, kids," she taunted.

As a test of her swords, she ran both right through the lungs of the one who had screamed, one sword per lung. Satisfied by the result, which was a dead mage, she turned to the others, running at them at incredible speeds.

Some of the mages broke out of their horror and shock and began attacking her again with telekinesis, but now to no avail. Azu just spun through the air, cutting the swords in half effortlessly before 'experimenting' on the different body parts of the mages.

One through the liver and the other through the stomach…

Two through the kidneys…

Cut the spine in half vertically…

Split the skull in the back…

Shatter the ribs and drive the little bits into the heart…

Tear the heart into two perfect halves…

It was a truly gruesome sight, but luckily for Azu, nobody but those who would be dead soon would see her in action here.

Eventually, she had defeated or killed all of the dark mages, although mostly the latter, and realized that she was drenched in red and black blood all over.

"Oh… I forgot to heal my own wounds," she mumbled to herself. Coming up with the most basic thing to say, she managed a **"Heal"** and her wounds disappeared instantly.

Looking back at the mess she caused, she thought, _I guess I overdid it a bit… Oh well, at least I got used to this in my last life… not to say that's a good thing._

Wiping the blood off of her and drawing it out of her clothes, Azu eventually managed to get all the blood off of her. Kicking the bodies of a few people that looked roughly like people she had killed on Earth that she had greatly disliked, she left the building, done with her mission in Joya.

* * *

The Magic Council's Rune Knights had arrived in the capital of Joya not too long after at the report that Emerald Sword had been utterly destroyed. Arriving at what they now knew was their headquarters, they walked in to find a horrifying scene. Blood completely covered the floor, as if the building had been flooded but with blood instead of water. Dismembered, mangled and mutilated bodies lay everywhere.

In the corner, one man stirred slightly, attracting the attention of the head of the Rune Knight division on the scene. Seeing the Rune Knight approach, the man mustered the strength to say two words with a look of absolute fear in his eyes: "... black … blood …"

Those were his very last words, much to the concern of the Rune Knight leader.

Black blood? How was such a thing possible?

Regardless of how such a thing can even exist, a new name was born for Azu.

" **Black Blood"**

* * *

 **Dark Guilds Left on the Hitlist: 13**

Azu's range of verbal spells is increasing!

~ **Steal**

~ **Deus Explicatio**

~ **Swords of Thanatos**

~ **Heal**


	5. Double Kill

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail**

* * *

 **/ Magic Council - Joya Branch /**

Two days after the incident, the Thought Projections of the nine councilmembers stood before the last surviving member of Emerald Sword, who was heavily bandaged. A trial was to be held for two purposes: to find who did such a gruesome act and to charge the remaining dark mage.

The Chairman, Gran Doma, began, "Tsubasa Goga. Concerning your membership of the former Dark Guild known as Emerald Sword, you are suspected of innumerable thefts across Joya. There are no witnesses, but your status as a dark mage will be enough to charge you nonetheless."

The mage, Tsubasa Goga, simply nodded in understanding as the Chairman continued, "However, we are currently more concerned about who your guild was attacked by."

Never lifting her eyes from the ground, Tsubasa managed to squeak out, "... short girl … long black hair … black clothes … and-" She froze, remembering the smiles that the girl had managed to give their guild while massacring them.

The councilmembers looked to each other, all thinking relatively the same thing. "Well, this certainly sounds like our new first-ranked Wizard Saint," one commented.

As the councilmembers all agreed that it was most likely the one they had met not so long ago, the Chairman spoke up, "Very well. As it appears, the first-ranked Wizard Saint is the one who destroyed Emerald Sword. While its destruction wasn't in a remotely decent way, it was still a Dark Guild and thus, no punishment will be pushed for the Wizard Saint."

As Tsubasa's eyes filled with a world of hurt at what the Chairman had just said, he continued, "Tsubasa Goga, the last remaining dark mage of Emerald Sword, is hereby sentenced to life in prison for her actions as a dark mage."

With that, Tsubasa Goga was dragged off to prison with tears streaming down her face, grieving for her fallen friends that she would never be able to avenge. Even if they were a Dark Guild full of dark mages, it's not like they weren't friendly with each other. They all understood each other well and knew what the others desired and felt. That's what had made them the strongest Dark Guild in the country. But now, it stood no more, completely annihilated.

* * *

 **/ Crocus /**

Azu had decided to take a few days off before moving on to her next target, but she didn't like what she read one morning in the international newspaper.

Titled "'Black Blood' Massacres Strongest Dark Guild in Joya", it was surprisingly accurate and included a description of her clothing, hair color and size. She even got a nickname, but what bothered her was the fact that her mask had been pretty useless in the end. But then again, she _did_ half expect this since there aren't many like her.

 _Well, I guess the mask over my face won't help much anymore with concealing my identity, if it ever did…_ She thought. _But maybe I'll be able to find another use for such a technique. Whatever the case, I hope Fairy Tail can handle having a mass murderer in their guild…_

 _I've rested enough for the time being, so I'll head off to Bosco to deal with Flaming Pine,_ Azu decided. _I can also test out my ability to eat flames there since the mages are mostly fire mages, like their guild's name suggests. Actually, this shouldn't be too hard, so I'll just eat my fill and see exactly how much 'my fill' is in terms of magic power._

Setting her newspaper down, she got herself ready for the day and teleported herself to the capital of Bosco.

* * *

The Boscan capital was absolutely disgusting. It reeked of poverty and corruption and slavery was apparently still a thing. It was a port city and the only place that didn't reek of poverty was the waterfront, where all the rich slave traders lived. As a trade-off, that place reeked of an entirely more disgusting stench, one devoid of humanity.

 _I'm getting the hell out of here,_ Azu immediately thought. _Hopefully, the mountains on the other side of the country aren't anywhere near as bad._

Reappearing at the summit of a mountain near the border with Seven…

 _It's equally disgusting here…_ She complained, _Why is the entire country like this, even so much that its highest peaks cannot escape?... Running back to Fiore for a bit to get away from this doesn't sound half bad._

With a little snow in her hair (because it was snowing on the summit), Azu left for southern Fiore to search for Flaming Pine from there.

* * *

Laxus and his team were walking through the forests of southern Fiore, looking for a training spot for the Grand Magic Games that were to be held in a few months. Suddenly and unexpectedly, a girl in black appearing inches before him. In a spur of the moment reaction, Laxus sent a few bolts of lightning towards her and Evergreen turned her into stone with her eyes.

 _I don't remember Zeus and Medusa being on good terms,_ Azu thought to herself sarcastically.

In the meantime, a shocked group of four were trying to figure out how this girl had simply appeared before them in an instant. On top of that, how did she have snow on her head when it was summer in Fiore and the mountains were across the country?

 _Well, now that I'm stone, I shouldn't exactly be able to think, but since I can do that much, I can easily escape,_ Azu reasoned, still frozen in place. _If I had to come up with a simple verbal command for it, it could just be_ _ **Null**_ _, but being unable to move my mouth at the moment, I can reconsider later._

Releasing herself, she turned to face the four, who were now even more shocked that someone had canceled out Evergreen's magic unfazed. Fulling facing them, she recognized them from her analysis when she first researched mages from around Fiore.

"Laxus Dreyar, Freed Justine, Evergreen, Bickslow," Azu began, "Fairy Tail. Are you asking for a fight?"

"You've got some nerve thinking that you're able to take us on," Laxus said confidently with a hint of annoyance.

"If we get just it over with, it wouldn't be a problem," Evergreen pointed out to Laxus.

"It'll be a warm-up for our mission!" Bickslow added with a hint of excitement while his floating dolls chanted "warm-up" repeatedly.

Freed, seemingly trying to remembering something he had seen that morning, was a little unsure of what they were about to do. However, once Laxus seemed to approve of the idea, he had no second thoughts and decided to follow their leader.

"You better be ready," Laxus challenged Azu, who had kept a straight, indifferent face the entire time.

"A warm-up wouldn't hurt," she responded.

Writing in the air with his sword, Freed shouted, **"Dark Écriture: Pain!"** followed by **"Dark Écriture: Suffering!"**

Evergreen followed up with **"Fairy Bomb: Gremlin!"** and let Bickslow follow her with **"Line Formation!"** courtesy of his dolls.

With dust swirling around the spot where the girl was, Laxus figured he'd better just finish off the area, just in case. **"RAGING BOLT!"** He shouted at the top of his lungs as he raised his hands skyward and then at the girl, creating an extremely powerful attack that hit Azu head on.

A few seconds later, Laxus and the others were a little disappointed in how easy their target had been, just until they could see her casually waving the dust out of her face, unscathed.

"Is that it?" She asked. "A little pain - a paper cut could do way more damage, a little explosive dust, lost souls attacking me, and a little electricity? Do try harder than that, or I'll start attacking."

The four Fairy Tail mages looked to each other and immediately understood that they were not facing an easy target. In fact, she was probably stronger than most of the mages they've ever seen, and they'd all seen a lot in their years. This was no longer a warm-up, for it was a real battle to see if they could even take down their opponent in the first place.

Laxus took the lead, filling his mouth with lightning and shouting **"LIGHTNING DRAGON'S ROAR!"** , immediately followed with **"Baryon Formation!"** from Bickslow and **"FAIRY MACHINE GUN: LEPRECHAUN!"** from Evergreen.

 _Machine gun? That?_ Azu thought as she materialized a heavily modified lightning rod and threw it at Laxus's attack while dodging both of Bickslow's and Evergreen's attacks. _Even with magic, you still can't do as good as Earth's technology? Disappointing…_

While she was thinking, Freed was busying himself with **"Dark Écriture: Wings!"** and **"Dark Écriture: Darkness!"** However, he was being far from silent and Azu easily heard him.

"'Darkness', you say?" Azu asked the newly flying demon-Freed. "Well, let's see how you like this: **BLACK DRAGON'S ROAR!** " She made sure to imitate Laxus's actions perfectly to make it seem as natural as possible.

Freed was literally blown away, leaving the three remaining Fairies in shock once more before Laxus spoke up. "So, you're a Dragon Slayer too?" He asked Azu with a smirk on his face.

"Maybe, but if you're practically worshipped by the 'Thunder God Tribe', does that make you a god?" Azu asked with the same smirk plastered on her face. Raising her fist and preparing to propel herself towards the Lightning Dragon Slayer, she said, "Well, let's see how you fare against this, fake god."

Shooting towards Laxus, Azu shouted **"FALSE GOD'S TITANIUM FIST!"**

Connecting with his chest, the spell sent Laxus flying backward straight into a tree, nearly flying straight through it despite it being nearly twice as wide as his arm span.

Teleporting Freed back to their relative location from wherever he ended up, Azu turned to the four mages, two moderately injured and two uninjured, and asked, "So, would you like to continue or would you let me get on with my business?"

"As if we'd give up that easil-" Laxus began, standing up again. However, he didn't continue because he suddenly couldn't stand. Looking for the source, he found it in the girl they were fighting, who had a massive amount of magic power radiating from her.

 _This power! I've never felt so much of it before,_ Laxus thought. _Not from Hades, not from the Old Geezer, not from Gildarts._

"Wrong answer," Azu told them in monotone before disappearing once again to a location a few miles away so she could search in peace.

…

When he was sure that the girl was gone, Freed weakly lifted his head up and spoke of his initial uncertainty that had just about been confirmed: "I knew there was something special about that girl, but I couldn't remember what. She's the one they're calling 'Black Blood'."

Evergreen turned to him with a very grim face, "We'd better be thankful that we're still alive, then."

Even Laxus had to agree with that assessment of the situation, but then he remembered something else. "She said a phrase that a Dragon Slayer would in order to take out Freed, but for the attack that she hit me with, her phrase was that of a God Slayer, if those exist," Laxus pointed out to his team. "Is that even possible? Being a Dragon Slayer and a God Slayer all in one?"

Of course, no one had an answer to that one.

* * *

Eventually, Azu located Flaming Pine in a part of Bosco that was pretty close to the border with Stella. Coincidentally, she located Heaven Horn, Stella's strongest Dark Guild, at the same time since it was barely 20 miles from the location of Flaming Pine.

 _There ought to be a reason for that…_ She reasoned.

 _{Flaming Pine and Heaven Horn are important partners of each other… Flaming Pine helps out Heaven Horn's organizational issues because a single person running everything gets difficult… Heaven Horn helps out Flaming Pine in terms of power since the former has much more powerful members in comparison to the latter… }_

 _Very well,_ Azu thought. _Looks like I'll have to end up fighting both today. Of course, I'm not complaining. It just makes things more interesting._

DIsappearing from Fiore, she reappeared on the roof of Flaming Pine, which was surrounded by pine trees in a thick forest.

 _Alright, so no mask today since there's no point at all,_ Azu reminded herself. _Also, entering through the front door is what I did last time, so the roof should do it this time around._

Smashing through the roof, Azu accidentally ended up collapsing the entire building.

"My bad," she mocked as the pile of wood exploded in flames, taking the surrounding forest with it into the ashes.

 _Might as well start testing myself now,_ Azu thought as she began to eat the flames. She finished quickly, revealing the mages below. She hasn't had her fill quite yet and all her opponents seemed fine, so all was well to begin the 'fight'. That is, until she noticed one of them holding a lacrima, calling Heaven Horn.

Calmly, Azu whispered **"Swords of Thanatos."**

As soon as her dual swords materialized, she lunged forward, slashing both the lacrima and its user in half. She knew it wouldn't prevent Heaven Horn from coming in full force, but it would prevent any unwanted challengers (because she actually wanted Heaven Horn to join, but not anyone else).

It took a moment for Flaming Pine to realize what she had just done, but when they finally did, whispers erupted.

"Could it actually be her?"

"Do you think?..."

"Not possible"

"What if it's true?"

"Is that really her?"

Dropping her swords and faking a maniacal smile when she heard them whispering, she said to them, "Black Blood? Hello, that's me. Guess what happens next!"

Some of the dark mages began to cower in fear at this revelation, but they were all more or less recovered after a quick load of encouragement from those who remained unfazed. Once they finally regained their full composure, they began attacking the young girl that had dared to attack them. Several began shouting:

" **RED SKULL!"**

" **HELL PROMINENCE!"**

" **BURNING SKY!"**

With many more spells than she would care to count being shot at her, she began consuming all the fire that was being thrown at her. The dark mages had heard of such an ability before and remained unfazed, reasoning that she couldn't eat forever, but when the girl before them just wouldn't stop eating, they began to have doubts.

 _I don't have any current benchmarks to compare to as for how much magic energy I can consume…_ Azu realized. _Quick mid-battle analysis?_

 _{The Magic Council uses MPFs… Magic Power Finders give magic power a numerical value… Its maximum value is 9,999… A single attack from a high ranking Rune Knight could average at 500… Rune Knights are the military of the Magic Council… }_

 _Right now, the magic I've absorbed is at a value of roughly 50,000. Not bad_ , Azu thought. _I've received about 100 attacks, so these guys are on the same level as the high ranking Rune Knights, whatever that means._

The dark mages just kept adding and adding to the fireball that surrounded Azu as the numerical of the magic power she absorbed reached 100,000, 200,000, 500,000, and finally 1,000,000. At that point, the dark mages could barely continue, having used up so much of their magic power. On the other hand, Azu somehow still wasn't "full".

Since Azu wasn't able to absorb power anymore, she decided to test how much she could output. However, she couldn't really decide what would be a "most powerful spell" for her because she could use so many different kinds of magic.

Eventually, she decided on **"Sǐwáng"** , Chinese for "death". It wouldn't necessarily be death magic, but its sheer power would be able to kill a normal person.

Spotting Heaven Horn closing in fast, Azu decided to get rid of the humans before she dealt with the artificially created mages. Gathering her magic power up, she focused her attention on the area surrounding her and whispered **"Sǐwáng"** , releasing a massive burst of energy and killing every single member of Flaming Pine.

 _2,109,485,763_ , Azu thought as she observed the numerical value given for her attack. _That's the exact amount of people I've killed on Earth. Assassinations, slaughtering of terrorists, executions, and some population control really add up… Well, maybe it's related. Although, this spell currently has an interesting side effect…_

The dark mages were all dead, yes, but they also had a giant hole through where their hearts used to be. Just as Azu had finished observing the damage she caused, she was hit in the side with an attack from one of the Fourth Generation Dragon Slayers.

While her heavily modified body took the attack with no damage, it still annoyed Azu that she had been hit so easily.

Looking back over at the army of Dragon Slayers closing in on her, she noticed that they were in all black armor with red glowing visors.

 _{Purely magical entities… Can be defeated if their magic power is drained… Very high physical abilities… Stealing their magic directly would be the best course of action… Perhaps enchanting some physical weapons with that_ _ **Null**_ _spell would work… }_

With that quick analysis out of the way, Azu picked her swords back up, enchanting them with a whispered **"Enchant: Null"**. Her swords were actually made of no magic whatsoever but rather reinforced steel. She had managed to play around with the steel so that it could cut through virtually anything, no matter how hard or thick, so it was more than enough for her.

 _I might actually want to change the properties of my swords so that it permanently keeps the effect I just put on it,_ Azu thought. _I don't have a reason to believe that I can cut through magic without magic, so I'll keep to the "safe" side._

By the time Azu was done with her modifications, she realized that her targets, with the exception of Heaven Horn's master, were all close to her location. However, they weren't even attempting to attack her. For whatever reason, they seemed much more interested in deforesting the area around her.

 _If you're going to do some deforesting, at least use the wood for something…_ Azu complained inwardly. Although confused by her opponents' actions, Azu took advantage of their situation momentarily and located their human member, the guild master, who was still back at their guild 20 miles away.

Attempting to catch the attention of the artificial beings that were too busy destroying the forest, Azu started waving her arms (with her swords) above her head saying, "I'm not a tree and I'm not over there…"

Somehow, that made the Dragon Slayers come back to their senses and they all came charging for Azu. She responded with a charge in their direction, prepared to strike with her swords. The Dragon Slayers, being artificial, had incredible reflexes, but they could still not keep up with Azu's practically inhuman movements.

One after another, they fell, limbs thrown in all directions. Some were split clean in half. Others exploded under the sheer force of her attacks. No matter what weapons or magic they used, they all ended up the same: depleted of their magic energy and utterly destroyed.

After Azu had finished with all the artificial beings, she took a breath and teleported in front of Heaven Horn's headquarters.

" **Fall,"** she whispered, causing the building in front of her to collapse onto itself.

Throwing some of the rubble around, she eventually found the man she was looking for. He was shaking with fear as she held him up by his hair, his eyes being forced to stare into her pitch black ones. She liked her bloodshot eyes (which were black due to her blood being black) because they usually gave people quite the fright before she killed them.

Cutting his head off in one clean motion, Azu turned to look at the sky.

 _No_ _matter what happens down here on a clear day, the sky always manages to keep itself pristine,_ Azu thought. _Maybe someone will change that in this world, eventually. There's certainly potential for that to happen with magic…_

 _Well, I guess I can get a few days of sleep for now… I have a lot of sleep to catch up on from all those years of obsession_ , Azu reminisced.

And with a flash of light, she was gone.

* * *

 **Dark Guilds Left on the Hit List: 11**


	6. The Sky

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail**

* * *

 **/ Crocus /**

 _Apparently, I'm pretty famous at this point,_ Azu mused as she read through the international newspaper. _It feels nice to read a newspaper once in a while since there isn't a such this as a "TV" or "The Internet" in this world for organizations to update viewers._

An imaginary light bulb flashed in her mind when she mentioned those two forms of 'extremely advanced technology', in the context of Earthland's progress at least. _Maybe I can still access either of those things from this planet…_

Materializing the old laptop she used during her time on Earth, she quickly altered its functions to make it so that it might be able to pick up on Earth's satellite signals, no matter how far away. The only thing Azu had to worry about was the fact that she was most likely not even in the same reality as that Earth - a parallel world of sorts, and that the magic of her current world might interfere.

Surprisingly, she was actually able to get a connection but realized that it was actually already over six years since she had left the Earth. _Based on the date I'm getting from Earth, one day here is about 200 days there…_ Azu calculated. _That's absurd, but I made sure that I didn't pass any time when I traveled here, leaving only the explanation that time passes differently in this different universe._

 _Seeing as to how I have a connection to Earth's Internet, I should check up on an old adversary…_ Azu thought. _Nicola Dieu… It's been a while since I've battled her, but it never ends well for the planet as a whole when we do, so I guess that's a good thing overall. She hasn't been active lately. Ever since my 'disappearance', as the media puts it, she hasn't shown herself, committed crimes, and is effectively known to have 'disappeared' as well._

 _Well, it'd be no fun to just use what I call my_ _ **'Deus Explicatio'**_ _to find her,_ Azu reasoned. _I'll just save it for later and hope that we don't end up destroying another planet…_

 **\\\ Flashback \\\**

 _I've only just gotten my magic from Egypt, but this research I've been doing sure is tiring_ , Azu thought to herself. _A trip to Neptune really shouldn't hurt. Besides… It's only for a little while and then I'll return._

Riding through the atmosphere, she looked into space, gazing at the endless expanse of stars and galaxies. The winds whipped at her black attire, but the breeze that was far colder than anything even the Antarctic could manage didn't bother her in the slightest. In fact, it was refreshing and a welcome break.

Without so much as a sound, a figure in a red dress appeared before Azu.

Looking up, Azu said, "So we meet again, Nicola."

"So we do, Azu", Nicola replied. Raising a handgun in each hand at Azu, she smiled and said, "I've been bored to death with my targets lately, so you're next on the list to take."

"... you get bored too easily," Azu replied.

"Well of course, how could a god not be bored by mere mortals?" Nicola replied dramatically, throwing her arms up.

"I think you'd understand things better if you just did something about your god complex," Azu replied, exasperated.

"Excusez-moi, what did you say?" Nicola replied in a deadly sweetness, quickly bringing her right-hand gun to Azu's forehead.

In one clean swipe, Azu materialized her swords and knocked Nicola's gun away from her head.

"I help the French government _once_ , and this is what I get… Seriously," Azu commented. "I'll have to get back at them eventually for stealing my technology and research and not even bothering to keep it properly protected."

"Not if you don't leave this planet," Nicola added, no longer smiling with a false sweetness, but rather with a lust for battle.

"So be it," came her response.

Both flying at each other, Azu with her swords ready to slash and Nicola with her guns ready to blow through her opponent, they stopped thinking about their surroundings and solely focused on their battle.

Nicola's guns shot never-ending rounds of diamond bullets coated with a thin layer of graphene, the latter of which was the strongest material available to only herself and Azu, for only they could manipulate it in a way which it would actually be useful yet still retaining its ridiculous strength. However, the usage of such a material as they wished would still require a very durable base for it to be attached to, hence why Nicola used diamond bullets. Her guns themselves were made of reinforced steel and coated with graphene, made for blocking attacks.

Similarly, Azu's swords were made of a mix of steel, pure titanium, and a stabilized version of Wurtzite boron nitride, the latter of which was another of the strongest materials available to only the two of them. Although the composition of her swords shouldn't be possible, many rules no longer applied to the two who were now in the heat of battle. Eventually, even though it took months, Azu had figured out how to mix the three materials together into a single substance that could be used for her blades. Adding the final touch, she also coated her whole swords, blade and hilt alike, with graphene, allowing her to cut through or block virtually anything.

With each slash that Azu sent at Nicola, Nicola blocked with her gun and sent a shot or two at Azu, who promptly either cut the bullets or blocked them in any way.

For hours on end, neither could get a leg up on the other. Their reflexes were both incredible and practically inhuman, blocking and sending attacks one after another, over and over.

Even after an entire day of fighting without stopping, neither of them quit - always creating a new way of attacking, moving into new positions, and ultimately blocking their opponent's attacks, again and again. They were so engrossed with their battle that they failed to realize exactly what they were doing, so much so that they didn't realize that they were literally cutting apart and creating holes in the atmosphere of Neptune.

Eventually, they had traveled so many times around Neptune during their fight that they had sliced off a considerable part of its atmosphere, even revealing its core in a few places. Unconsciously, Azu began invisibly releasing her magic into a heavily concentrated ball, leaving it about a mile from where she was.

Slowly, Azu and Nicola were growing more frustrated that they couldn't win even in the slightest. In a full rage, Nicola shot towards Azu and pushed her back towards where the ball of magic was. Of course, neither of them noticed its presence due to how preoccupied they were, but after half a minute of sparring around it, Azu raised both swords and Nicola raised both guns, all heading to the same location. That location just happened to be where the concentrated magic was.

Upon impact from two swords and two guns blocking them, the ball of magic exploded violently, sending Azu and Nicola flying through space in opposite directions and disintegrating Neptune entirely.

Once she had recovered from her battle trance, Azu looked around, unaware of how Neptune had actually exploded.

Azu shot a mental message to Nicola, unwilling to meet her again and waste time on yet another fight: _I hope you're satisfied with destroying a planet._

 **\\\ End Flashback \\\**

 _Now that I think about it, God Serena kind of had the same personality as Nicola,_ Azu thought. _They both even have 'God' in their self-given names, with 'Dieu' meaning 'God' in French._

 _Regardless of the past, it's about time that I get to work for today,_ Azu reminded herself. _How about Vitium today? That little memory got me in the mood for some sins._

 _If I've learned anything from last time, it's that I should research what I need to before I actually go there,_ she thought as she remembered her experiences in Bosco.

 _{Vitium… Currently on a small island belonging to Enca far from trade routes… Currently present in a building with the entire guilds of Mot Spine, Black Cloud, and Zünder… }_

 _Four in one go today?_ Azu questioned. _Not bad, I guess, but I'm going to leave behind too much time to do nothing at this rate._

… _On second thought, that sounds like a better idea. It seems like I'm practically addicted to sleeping now, although I'm pretty sure that I can't keep that up forever._

Looking up one last time before she left, she observed the sky.

 _Peaceful as ever,_ she thought as she disappeared.

* * *

Reappearing East of Enca's main island, Azu spotted her targets, all of whom were apparently in a massive castle.

 _Since there's so many this time around, I should make a way to make sure that they can't leave no matter what,_ Azu reasoned. _It's too bad that I didn't bother to learn the Rune languages here, though. I'll have to see if just using English and that Wingdings font works out. Nobody here should be able to decipher that._

Flying towards the castle and landing on its central spire, Azu began writing in the air in the Earthen font. _I look ridiculous and this magic is ridiculous, but I shouldn't be complaining. Most of what I do is in the style of "because I said so" anyways, so this sort of magic is practically perfect for me._

Finished writing her Runes of Earthen emoticons, Azu decided on opening the front door like a civil being this time around. It just happened to be the only door leading to the outside from the castle, which was bad architecture and security, but that would mean that only one party would be necessary to guard the entrances, seeing as there is only one entrance at all.

As she opened the massive doors slowly, she was met with several explosions to the face, which she promptly ate up as Fire Magic.

As the clouds of smoke from the explosions cleared, Azu calmly said a single word: "Zünder."

Not allowing another word from her mouth, the dark mages immediately began firing at her again. Some were using lacrimas and others were using their own magic.

Deciding that she might want to use the lacrimas for later, Azu wanted to kill only the mages.

To achieve said goal, she audibly mumbled **"Absolute Zero."** This caused all the mages and their surroundings to become frozen in ice. Just in case, it also meant freezing their blood, brain, internal organs and all those other vital parts so that there wouldn't be a chance of living.

 _The local Dark Guild is down,_ Azu counted off. _Three more to go._

Picking up the explosion lacrimas left behind, she made her way through the castle to the main dining area, where the other three guilds currently were.

The door was, surprisingly, wide open. _They're a bit too confident…_ And at that thought, Azu set the lacrimas to become massive grenades (without shrapnel) and threw them at high speeds toward the center of the mages.

Of course, they didn't affect the mages much given that they were all pretty strong and durable, even if all the lacrimas detonated at precisely the right times. However, it wasn't Azu's goal to injure them with the blast, but rather to get their attention.

"Looks like I'm crashing a meeting today," she commented smugly once all eyes were on her at the doorway.

 _It looks like the seven assassins represent the seven virtues as opposed to the sins, but why would they have a meeting between them?_ She questioned silently. _Speaking of which, how do they even know these things since they were ideas created on Earth? And their names are even the Latin words for their respective virtues and sins nonetheless… This is just plain strange._

The 14 sins and virtues looked to the opposites among them - Luxuria to Castitas, Gula to Moderatio, Avaritia to Caritas, Acedia to Industria, Ira to Patientia, Invidia to Gratia, and Superbia to Humilitas - and faced Azu at their side. Closing their eyes, the pairs focused their accumulation of sins and virtues, stolen from lands far and wide, and turned them into pure magic. Forming silver orbs of swirling magic, they began radiating strong amounts of magic energy.

 _About 20,000 on the MPF for each silver orb. The sins and virtues working together seem to strengthen each other tremendously,_ Azu thought. Continuing out loud, "So I'm guessing the reason that your assassination style is so successful is that you take your target's resistance to temptations, their cares, their diligence, their patience… their sanity. It's two bird with one stone for you because they're gone and you gain more power. Very interesting."

Hearing enough, Superbia and Humilitas were about fire off their very potent magic when suddenly there was a blast of white light. When the light cleared, one of the members of Black Cloud was standing behind Azu, who herself had a spear sticking through her chest where her heart was.

"Well aren't you a fast one," she remarked, still slightly shocked that someone had been able to damage her so badly in such a short amount of time. As the black liquid she was known for poured out of her wound, she pulled the spear out like it was nothing and threw it back at the mage at twice the speed. It hit him in the center of his forehead, instantly killing him.

Finally turning her attention to the gaping hole in her chest, she whispered **"Heal"** to completely erase the wound from existence. With another whispered **"Heal"** for her torn shirt, she looked to her opponents to find them unmoved. The silver orbs of Mot Spine and Vitium in their combined powers had grown stronger, but the "real" concern lay in the back of the room.

Black Cloud, the guild full of Wizard Saint class mages in terms of magic power.

 _Let's see how they deal with God Serena's magic before they get the chance to face me,_ Azu thought, as if planning a game. _Unfortunately, I have to actually shout for this magic because it already exists and, for some reason, requires shouting. I'll just have to play along._

Raising her right hand and having her palm face outwards, she moderately shouted **"Sea King Dragon's Encircling Deluge!"**

With what had initially been a tiny swirl of water in her palm, a massive whirlpool surrounded the entire guild. However, it was only a matter of seconds before she heard a firm **"True-Ice Kamui!"** from the guild master, covering him in armor of ice and allowing him to freeze the whirlpool almost instantly.

 _{Invel Yura - Guild master of Black Cloud}_

 _Ironically, the guild master of 'Black' Cloud has mostly white hair,_ Azu internally commented. _Also, he used magic just like the spell I named "Absolute Zero" earlier._

"Interesting, but let's see just how much you can freeze," she continued out loud. Before she could begin the next of her Dragon Slayer spells, Acedia and Industria leaped at her, silver ball between them.

 _They can fight without any weird chanting, but that's only to be expected of assassins,_ Azu mused as she readied herself.

Dodging an ever more powerful jet of silvery magic streaking towards her, Invidia with Gratia and Gula with Moderatio leaped forward. The spheres of magic the pairs had all produced were made up of raw emotions in eternal contradiction. If even a little of the magic hit you, you'd stop in confusion momentarily. If too much hit you, your brain would fry from the effects of the very strong and contradicting emotions.

Quickly, the rest of the pairs joined in, forcing Azu to dodge around deadly attacks one after another. Even if her brain wasn't entirely biological, she still needed her biological parts for it to function. If there was anything that she wasn't immune to, it would be emotion, so she was at a disadvantage. She might be able to handle certain emotions in excess, but there was no way for her to be certain for the time being and this was no time to take absurd risks.

Of course, it was no use for Black Cloud to just stand and watch, so only seconds after all the sins and virtues had joined in, they too joined the fray.

Instantly, one of them broke the sound barrier and hit Azu straight on, causing her to miss her footing. She was still able to dodge the swings from Avaritia and Caritas that were only millimeters away, but then got struck with a pillar of hardened earth in the leg, causing her to stumble yet again. This time, she ended up with a long sword, two daggers, and a burst of arrows to the stomach and a full hit from Ira and Patientia.

Due to Azu's modified body, which was heavily strengthened, the physical attacks only tore at her clothes and left some scratches and dents, but nothing threatening. However, the attack from Ira and Patientia caused her to collapse momentarily.

Taking full advantage of the situation, a curvaceous woman in a very revealing outfit faced Azu and said, **"Command T: Expansion"**. As a result, the size of Azu's wounds increased, even through her modified body. The cuts became gashes. The dents became gaping holes in her flesh.

 _{Brandish μ - Second in command of Black Cloud}_

Only as soon as Azu had established the woman's name, she was completely frozen over by Invel. As Azu lay motionless, encased in ice, the three guilds waited to see if she was really dead, unwilling to led down their guard.

In the meantime, Azu was busy trying to regain control of her brain due to the combination of wrath and patience she was given by the attack from Ira and Patientia. Luckily, she had received an attack from those two because she could convert some wrath into killing power and take the element of patience and translate it into the running out of patience. Turning the levels of wrath down a few notches until she felt stable again, she decided to try one more experiment but would leave it for just a little later.

Concentrating some of her magic power into scorching heat, Azu was able to break out of Invel's ice, only to realize her extensive wounds. With a whispered **"Heal"** , her wounds were once again perfectly healed. Only an instant before everyone in the room resumed their attacks on Azu, she managed to put her hands in front of her chest together as if in prayer, closed her eyes, and shouted, **"Pure Purgatory Dragon's Hypernova!"**

The amount of power she put into the spell caused it to become explosive enough to completely erase the castle from existence and send a good deal of the dark mages flying into her Runes, unconscious.

 _Okay, so combining two of the Dragon Slayer Magics works,_ Azu mentally noted. _What about three or more? It might get a little ridiculous to say in the middle of a battle, though._

Still under the effects of excessive wrath and a lack of patience, she turned to the remaining mages and said, "It's rather unfortunate for you that I was hit by Wrath and now also have a lack of patience thanks to the mage of the same name because it seems like a good time as ever to unload some of that rage where it belongs." Each word dripped with venom, causing some to flinch slightly.

Turning her eyes pitch black, Azu called out, **"Crimson Cavern Wraith Dragon's Barren Earth!"**

With that, the ground turned black and exploded with such force that many of the mages were literally torn apart by the displaced earth. The sins and virtues were still fully intact and Invel and Brandish were holding their own, but about half of Black Cloud was not as lucky. Their bodies laid mangled and bloodied across the area where the castle once stood.

Not allowing a chance for her opponents to recover, Azu raised her hands and shouted with her newfound wrath, **"ELEMENTAL DRAGONS' BRILLIANCE!"**

An explosion incomparable to the previous one occurred, blowing apart all the land within a mile of Azu, severing the very Earth itself. From the new cracks in the Earth came forth the images of the Purgatory, Cavern, Sea King, and Gale Dragons, representing the four elements. They flew straight into the sky a mile high and roared loud enough to cause a normal human to lose their hearing. Looking back on the ground below, all four of the dragons drew in a breath before letting loose on the land below them, demolishing everything in sight and creating a kilometer-deep hole with Azu in its center, still seething.

Unable to afford to take any more attacks, the seven pairs and the heads of Black Cloud made a desperately fast leap at Azu, only to be met with an even louder shout from her as they drew near: **"EIGHT DRAGONS' ULTIMATUM!"**

All that were near were blown away faster than they could process what had happened as the eight dragons erupted from the Earth, swirling around Azu. As they began swirling and spinning faster, the ground began to crack further and burst into flames. With each new crack, a new torrent of boiling water came streaming from within the Earth. The winds whipped, the clouds in the sky turned red and rained the blood of Black Cloud. Black and white lights fell from the sky as crystals and pierced through anything and everything below them. One after another, the crystals tore through the virtues, then the sins, and finally one managed to get Brandish. Invel could only manage to hide behind his armor.

Increasing her output of magic, the winds shredded the bodies of the already dead members of Black Cloud. The flames scorched the bodies of the virtues. The waters boiled the bodies of the sins.

The skies turned pitch black.

 _Not so peaceful anymore, are you sky?_ Azu questioned jokingly, half maniacally in her trance. _Black with red clouds. Not bad._

Dragons still swirling around her, Azu looked at the barely alive members of Mot Spine and Vitium. Raising her arms, she gave a poisonous smile and raised her arms, shouting yet louder, **"FALSE GOD'S FALL!"**

Completely unleashing the full force of the spell, the 14 dark mages, among the most dangerous in the world, were dead. Their bodies were a bloody mess, but to Azu, it was a job well done.

Looking around, Azu found that Invel and Brandish were the only two still alive out of the four Dark Guilds initially present. Releasing the effects of the eight dragons, she turned to the two of them and spoke in a deadly tone, "For being able to survive all that, I'll give you a single chance to live by sending you to the western continent and you better not come back to this continent. You ought not to test my patience while I have _none_." And with that, she teleported them off to the western continent, terror still on their faces.

After a few seconds, Azu whisked the blood off of her and turned her attention back to the sky, which had now recovered and was back to its white clouds and blue background.

 _Just like nothing at all happened,_ she noted, smiling slightly.

* * *

 **/ Vistarion (Capital City of The Alvarez Empire) /**

As Invel and Brandish appeared in Vistarion, they land merely feet before a black haired man wearing high-collared black robes with gold trim.

He looks to them and senses what powerful magic they possess, but his attention is diverted to their injuries and how they suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Questions can come later, but for now, I'd like you two to come with me," he said to the two heads of Black Cloud.

The two of them, sensing the man's power, decided that it would be best for them to follow.

Another continent, another chance, right?

* * *

 **Dark Guilds Left on the Hit List: 7**


	7. Loving Sky

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail**

* * *

Azu's home was in central Crocus, blocks from the Flower Light Palace: Mercurius. Just like how she would've done things on Earth, she manipulated the currency of her new homeland so that she would effectively be infinitely rich without causing the currency to inflate. She wasn't the sort of person that would use that money to buy a thousand different cars and houses to flaunt off her riches to the world. Rather, she used the money to live comfortably and the rest was merely in reserve should there be an emergency where she would have to go on a massive spending spree.

Here in Fiore, she wouldn't need an infinite amount of Jewels because the high amounts of magic in the atmosphere could be used to create any new materials she would need. Additionally, all her experience from the past years meant that she didn't need any help in creating new parts, machines, or whatever else. That would mean that she wouldn't ever have to pay others for services that she was now capable of doing perfectly. Adding even more to the list, it seemed that Earthland was a predominantly magical society, meaning that their means of offense and defense would most likely be of magic, meaning that she would have to focus on magical development rather than technological development, the former of which didn't cost a single Jewel.

However, there was one special bit of technology that was on her mind.

 _It's been years in Earth time since I left so there must've been a lot of new anime that came out in the meantime,_ Azu thought as she lay on her bed, staring at her blank ceiling. _I wasn't able to watch much in my final years on Earth because I was so busy, so I have a lot to catch up on._

Pulling herself up and sitting up, she continued, _Actually, I have pretty much all of modern anime to catch up on… Well, at least I have plenty of time here._

Materializing a 75-inch curved TV of her own design, Azu began to rearrange her room so that it would have a comfortable sofa in front of the area where the TV would go. She didn't actually have much in her bedroom, so the rearrangement wasn't a tall task in the slightest. She didn't have much in her house at all because she didn't need to have stuff lying around when she could always just materialize it when she needed it and plus, she wouldn't want a cluttered house.

Once she was satisfied with the positioning, she recalibrated the TV to receive signals from Earth and its various networks that could provide her with what she wanted.

 _Mavis, you there?_ Azu asked, shooting Mavis a mental message.

 _I'm here,_ Mavis responded. _Do you need me, Azu?_

 _Could you come over to my place?_ Azu requested. _Since your mobile body is made of magic, it should be able to reappear anywhere, right?_

 _You're right and yes, I'll come over,_ Mavis responded. _But what for?_

 _I'll tell you when you get here._

Within a minute, Mavis reappeared on top of Azu's bed. Presumably, she would know which room to go to simply by sensing where Azu was via her magical signature. Even though Azu was trying to keep her aura at an almost nonexistent level so that it's choking power wouldn't bother normal people or impede on her opponents' abilities to fight, she let it radiate just a little stronger for Mavis to be able to find her more easily before returning it to its minimal state. She had no intentions of hiding who she was at this point, but it would be too annoying to deal with all the complaints that would come from allowing a very strong magic aura to constantly emanate from her.

Sensing the size of the entire house, Mavis asked, "Is this entire building yours?"

"Yes, it is," Azu told her. "But I don't use most of the space and it's not like I have a lot of rooms. I just wanted the rooms to be a lot more spacious and open because it's a lot more comfortable that way - more relaxing."

"How did you even afford this place? Last I checked, you spend most of your time sleeping and not working, and you've only been around for about a month," Mavis questioned.

 _Definitely not by questionable means…_ "I bought it legally and that's technically all that matter, so don't sweat the details," Azu said as she gave Mavis a wink in an attempt to convince her not to question any further.

Getting the message and shifting her attention, Mavis pointed at the TV, having never seen anything like it, and asked, "What's the large black thing on the wall for?"

"That's for what I wanted you to come over for," Azu answered. "You have lacrimas here that can display still and moving images, right?" At Mavis's nod, Azu continued, "Well this is sort of similar except it can receive those images without using any magic at all. It's not a lacrima, but rather a 'television' or 'TV' for short."

Staring at the TV with stars in her eyes and her wing ornaments fluttering with excitement, Mavis couldn't help but be curious like the child she biologically was. Never in her century of living had anyone even tried to make such a device without using magic because it was supposedly impossible. But here was proof otherwise, so what other possibilities could that open up? She would only have to let her mind run wild.

All the meanwhile, Az was waving her hand in front of Mavis's face, trying to get her attention because she was staring off into space. When Azu finally succeeded, she said, "As interested as you are about my TV, I didn't ask you to come over to just show you that. I wanted to watch some things with you."

"Things from your world?" Mavis asked, no less curious.

Azu nodded and continued, "There's one country that creates sets of moving images, which we call animations, in a unique style that we know as 'anime'. It's been a while since I've been able to watch it and I thought it'd be nice if I could catch up with the times with you since we're friends."

Mavis only smiled brightly while Azu was wondering whether or not she had screwed up.

 _It's been too long since I've had a friend,_ she thought. _I don't really know how to invite people to do things in a casual and friendly way-_

She was cut off when Mavis happily exclaimed, "I'd be happy to watch these 'shows' with you!"

Relieved that she hadn't been taken the wrong way, Azu smiled and turned the TV on. Sifting through a massive list of shows, she eventually ended up on one called "Aijou no Aru Sora", which seemed to have decent ratings. Interested, she started the first episode and went to sit on the new sofa. At Azu's invitation, Mavis joined her on the sofa.

 **|| In the show: ||**

The clouds moved peacefully through the crystal blue sky, blown by the gentle breeze. In full bloom, the cherry blossoms marked the presence of spring in the small town. The children of the town were out and about, some more excited than others. The first day of school was one of excitement, nervousness, and boredom, all depending on who one would like to speak of.

All through the morning, different schools held their entrance ceremonies. At the end of one junior high school's entrance ceremony, one boy went to his new class, 2-A, and took his seat in the back of the room. He didn't particularly care for the entrance ceremony or what the principal and student council had to say to everyone. He was only interested in his programming and lines of code.

Of course, he was obligated to listen to the lessons to see if he could learn anything at all from them, but other than that, he didn't particularly care about anything that happens at school. He didn't have friends because his personality was frankly dreadful, so there wasn't anyone to be social with either. And so, he did the only thing he could and took out his laptop and started coding again, which he would do until classes started.

He wasn't insane, but the things he was trying to accomplish at his age and level of education might as well be. Instead of coding things like games, he was working to alter certain parts of the human body - for what reason, he'd figure out later on because it was just a hobby at this point. Most never paid attention to him because they all thought that he was just strange and should be left alone, but not everyone is the same, right?

On this particular first day of school, as the boy was working on his project, a girl with long, straight black hair stood in the doorway. She surveyed the room, only to be met with some of the boys "surveying" her. As a girl who held herself high, she turned, disgusted, to another direction, only to find a boy who paid her no attention at all.

She was actually a transfer student, so she didn't know anyone at this school. However, she was often a transfer student in all different parts of the country because her family was always on the move for business, but she had never once come across someone that didn't even bother to look up at her. There would always be people either leered at her for her looks or be even the slightest bit jealous, but this one just didn't bother. When people got to be around her for longer, she would always attract attention for other reasons, but the way the boy just ignored everything made her believe that he wouldn't give her that unwanted attention.

It didn't bother her because it was a nice break, but she couldn't help but be curious about this boy. She began to walk up to him, proper as always, only to hear the suddenly disgusted comments from her new classmates. Being a transfer student, she was entirely unaware of the circumstances, but it became immediately clear that this boy was not well liked at all here. More realistically, it was the complete opposite.

Nonetheless, that wouldn't stop her curiosity. Pushing aside the comments of the others, she continued to walk towards the boy, who had remained indifferent the entire time. Even as she stood in front of his desk and faced him, he didn't bother to look up from his laptop and just kept on typing furiously. As anyone would, the girl found this action - or rather, the lack of - to be quite irritating.

Clearing her throat, she moved to the side of his desk and spoke in a way that wasn't too proper, not rude, but enough to possibly get his attention.

"Hello," she said. "I am Charlotte…"

She stopped when he suddenly looked towards her, pausing slightly before looking up and locking his eyes onto hers. His emotionless eyes met her surprised ones and all at once, they both froze in place and felt a sudden rush within them that neither could describe.

And the clouds just kept on passing in the crystal blue sky, the wind picking up.

* * *

As the opening song started playing, Azu looked out of her own window, reminiscing on memories of her own. Only a few minutes had passed in the show, but she had already formed a personal connection.

Focusing half her attention on the show once again, she lost her other half in old memories.

 **\\\ Flashback \\\**

The clouds moved peacefully through the crystal blue sky, blown by the gentle breeze. In full bloom, the cherry blossoms marked the presence of spring in the small town. The children of the town were out and about, some more excited than others. The first day of school was one of excitement, nervousness, and boredom, all depending on who one would like to speak of.

All through the morning, different schools held their entrance ceremonies. At the end of one junior high school's entrance ceremony, one girl went to her new class, 2-A, and took her seat in the back of the room. She didn't particularly care for the entrance ceremony or what the principal and student council had to say to everyone. She was just bored and lonely.

She was at a new school, in Japan of all places. Being from America, she didn't understand why the Japanese schooling system worked the way it did, but she had no choice but to go with it. Either way, it wouldn't matter to her because she knew everything a middle school could possibly teach her. She was never good at making friends, much less maintaining friendships, so she always had an abundance of spare time, which she used to study everything she could possibly study.

Her studying was not necessarily in the interests of becoming knowledgeable or becoming an exceptional student. Rather, her studying was to eventually fulfill the senses of a greater self that she was being fed. She knew of her potential. She knew of everything that she could do. She knew what everyone said about her - all the praises and insults.

And she also knew that all her potential was wasted. And she also knew that she was incapable of doing pretty much anything. And she also knew that the praises were false. And she also knew that the insults were mostly true. And she also knew that she really was useless to the world. And she also knew that she had to somehow do something about that. Not for anyone else, but only out of the selfish feeling of wanting to feel worth anything at all.

No matter how "smart" people said she was, no matter how "knowledgeable", no matter how "insightful", no matter how "formidable", she was in no state to accept those remarks as the truth. In her current state, she was nothing at all, so she had to make herself something at all and free herself from her constraints.

But there was one massive "problem". Somewhere down the line, her visions for being a person of use began to warp into those of someone beyond a known reality, someone that defied logic, someone too powerful. She ended up with a little voice prodding her forward, making her delve deeper and deeper into her imagination for more ridiculous ideas. The further she delved, the further she got from her goal. As she created a bigger and bigger distance between her and her goals, the more she lost herself in the endeavor to reach her goals.

In America, she was no longer in a state acceptable by society and her parents were by no means supportive of her wishes. They were always anything but supportive. Just find any classic examples of family abuse in novels and that's pretty much it except the only form of torture was emotional. Freedom was restricted, she was never to be supported or helped, she feared that her useless self would always be subject to more and more torture.

From the day she became conscious, it had always been like that. In the beginning, she took it in her stride, not letting it get to her. But as the years went by, her mind deteriorated more and more, dragging her entire life down with it. As she was thrown into the dark depths to drown for eternity, she could find no way to swim up. As she tried in vain for years to inch up, she would always end up being thrown down further. So, what could she do? Keep trying?

That's what she kept doing, year after year, again and again. But eventually, she couldn't hold everything in her anymore, pretending like she was just alright. No matter how hard she had tried to keep it all to herself and no matter how skilled she had become in the art of emotional concealment, she had to eventually lose it. And so, she did. So, what could she do? Keep trying? Or swim out through the bottom?

And that, she did. Snapping, she packed her things and prepared for her finale in the 'land of the free'. She didn't need much since her parents weren't particularly careful and just left enormous wads of cash lying around the house, meaning that she would be able to pay for herself in another country. With her quick planning complete, there was only the finale left.

Murder. The entire family. It was one to be all over the national news. Nothing too fancy. Just a pistol, a few kitchen knives, and a hell of a lot of blood. She took her sweet time, letting them bleed out slowly as she slashed at them time and time again. To finally take out everything within her felt so refreshing, even if she knew how terrible her method of doing so was. Nobody should find the sight of their family sitting in pools of blood a wonderful sight, but as far as she cared, these people were not her family. They were mere trash, that which deserved what they got.

Sure, murder still isn't moral, but she never had a moral code, courtesy of the lack of example from her 'family'. She knew this wasn't acceptable by society, so all she had to do was disappear for good, never to be found. And no, that didn't mean death, although she would've graciously accepted that fate.

Before anyone could find the crime, the girl rid the blood from her clothes and body and grabbed a fake identity that she had made earlier. Calling a taxi, she left for the airport. From the airport, she left for Japan. It was a pain, but she would have to go through a total of four years of junior high school - 6th and 7th grades in America, 8th and 9th grades in Japan. It was also a pain that she would have to speak Japanese all the time. Even though she was fluent in English, French, and Japanese, she greatly preferred to speak in English because she found it most comfortable for her, but she would just have to deal with it. If she wanted to live a new life, there would have to be some trade-offs. She still had a goal to achieve, after all.

Here, in her new school, she listened as everyone around her had their normal conversations, talking about games they played, shows they watched, things they did the other day. She didn't care what they were talking about, but she couldn't help but listen. She was always listening, whether or not she was meant to be and whether or not she wanted to. All information was important, even it seems useless. Even for her lack of friends, she knew how to navigate around the minds of people quite well and knew exactly how to converse with each person she observed. It might as well be called creepy, but it was just a habit she couldn't shake.

She watched as her new classmates slowly filed into the room, one after another. Most of them seemed pretty friendly together, so she felt a little left out, although she was used to that feeling. As kids streamed in, there was eventually one girl that stopped in the doorway, observing the classroom nervously. The girl's disruption of the flow caused many to begin staring at the girl, who promptly ignored them seeing as how the girl was nervous enough as is.

Eventually, the girl's eyes fell on her. She immediately recognized the girl as one who had visited her school in America for a week for no apparent reason. They didn't talk much, but they got along relatively well, not that they thought they would ever meet again so soon. They looked each other in the eye for a solid minute before the girl finally widened her eyes in realization.

"Charlotte?!" The girl yelled out in surprise.

"Mei Namida, or rather, Namida Mei as they would say here, that is no longer my name," she replied in English.

"So, what do I call you now?" Mei questioned.

"Azu Yami."

 **\\\ End Flashback \\\**

Her last name wasn't literally "darkness" for no reason, and that reason was certainly not because she was trying to be cool or anything like that. Her very being was defined by darkness at that point. That aside, she really couldn't help but draw the connections between how the boy met the girl in Aijou no Aru Sora and how she had met Mei. However, neither of their cases could end at simple introductions like that, so there was clearly more, just like in the case that Azu and Mavis were currently watching.

As the boy and the girl saw each other more and more in school, the boy began to look up from his coding for once and the girl began to drop her guard a little for once. It was all just a classic beginning to a deeper bond, but even the most cliché occurrences have their realistic backgrounds and contexts from which they draw.

 **\\\ Flashback \\\**

As the days flew by, Azu began to cling closer to Mei since she was friendly and literally the only person Azu could talk to. As the weeks flew by, the two began growing closer, getting to know what the other was interested in and what they liked. As the months flew by, Azu grew closer and closer to her goal with Mei at her side. Despite Azu's lack of ability to hold a friendship, Mei never let go of that bond, and so they were able to remain as friends, even when Azu occasionally pushed Mei away for various reasons.

Despite Azu's initial comment, Mei still decided to call Azu "Charlotte" rather than "Azu", although Azu didn't mind all that much in all honesty. As thanks for becoming her 'saving grace', Azu gave Mei every ounce of knowledge she had, allowing them to easily breeze through school without a care. With all their free time together, they worked towards Azu's goal together, with Mei participating because she wholeheartedly wanted to support Azu through her long endeavor.

After four years, they finally broke through and finalized their first masterpiece: the perfected mind. Mei had reluctantly accepted that Azu would be experimenting on herself whenever she felt like testing out their work, despite them both knowing that they were doing very dangerous work. Luckily, nothing bad had ever actually happened to Azu during all of her self-experiments, but luck couldn't always be counted on.

Their masterpiece, the perfected mind, was essentially a system in which half the brain was biologically natural and the other half was a supercomputer of sorts. The biological half handled all of the body's natural functions with the assistance of the supercomputer while the supercomputer enhanced the brain and body's abilities and allowed its user to become able to attain ridiculous powers. The biologically impossible became entirely possible with this masterpiece, achieving the groundbreaking first step that Azu had come to so desperately need over the years.

Naturally, Azu gave it a test run first, as in having her brain rearranged by Mei's hands and having the supercomputer installed. If anything happened to her, at least Mei would be physically fine and Azu would find her long accepted fate to be her reality, but those thoughts were unnecessary, for the procedure was a success. Azu thereafter did the same procedure for Mei because they _did_ make it together after all. It would be wrong if only one of them were to reap their rewards.

Mei was content with only the immense knowledge and brainpower now at her disposal, but Azu still had an endless list to take care of. When school was entirely out of the way, Azu and Mei went together around the world in search of vivid imaginations that Azu could recreate for herself. Fighting styles, "magic" tricks, fictional abilities, everything. Occasionally, Mei would find that something that they made was desirable and proceeded to incorporate it into herself, like flying or being able to survive in outer space.

For years, they scoured the Earth together for every last shred of knowledge and imagination. It wasn't a droning task in the slightest, for the two friends were having fun in their work. As time passed, they had become famous for their immense knowledge and achievements as a result of said knowledge, but they almost never revealed their superhuman abilities to anyone. Only the highest ranking Japanese, Chinese, and French government officials knew of their abilities and occasionally asked for assistance in various issues ranging from disease control to fighting against "terrorists".

These governments didn't exactly ask frequently, but the French government eventually had a slip-up and well… Nicola Dieu happened. The Chinese and Japanese governments were exceptional at keeping their secrets, but the French government was ever so slightly corrupt at the time, leaving room for a higher ranking government official to allow for misbehavior. In the end, only Nicola Dieu knew something that she shouldn't have, but that was still more than enough of a problem.

Not too long after that incident, Azu and Mei were in Rome to rest for a bit, exhausted by their long hours of searching, analyzing, creating, and stressing. They had just come back from Egypt, where Azu had found something she could only describe as "magic". They had been looking through mythology and legends for any hints but found nothing too substantial, so they resorted to playing around with Azu's new powers.

Their experiments did not go unnoticed by many, but most importantly, they were very clearly noticed by one woman. Clad in red, she looked over Rome from above the Vatican, watching as the lights flickered a few miles away. Holding a pistol in each hand, she flew at twice the speed of sound towards the source of the lights. Reaching her destination in mere seconds, she found the two girls together on the floor, poking at a swirling orb of light.

Azu and Mei both immediately recognized their intruder: "Nicola Dieu."

Nicola smirked, replying "Why hello, you two. Cutting straight to the chase, I've already proved my prowess overall to France and now I must prove it to the world!"

"Because making the Eiffel Tower the tallest building in the world by three-fold, by yourself, is an accurate representation of prowess…" Mei muttered.

Before Nicola could defend her ego, Azu said, "And I assume by 'proving your prowess overall to the world', you mean getting rid of us." At that, Nicola forgot about defending herself and smirked wider, raising her two pistols.

Azu continued, "You appear to lack understanding of the situation at hand. By killing us, you are no more than a murderer known the world over. Making yourself infamous worldwide does not translate into being the most powerful person on Earth."

"And you seem to also misunderstand the situation at hand," Nicola responded mockingly. "Once you two are dead, I can be primitive and twist the story of your deaths as I wish, but that's not all I wish for. I also have the capability to take all of your 'powers' and transfer them to my body seamlessly. Once you're dead, there's nothing that'll stop me from achieving the childish dream of world domination."

"You said yourself that it's a childish dream…" Mei retorted in a low voice.

Ignoring Mei and not waiting for any response, Nicola shot a volley of bullets towards the two, all of which were cut by a sword that Azu instantaneously materialized. While Azu and Mei got their footings, Nicola shot round after round at them, all of which Azu managed to cut or deflect.

It should be noted, however, that Mei was in no condition to fight someone the likes of Nicola. She never took an interest in fighting strategies or body reinforcements that would help her in a fight because she simply wasn't interested in fighting. It had no appeal to her and she hoped that she could get out of most situations peacefully. If peace doesn't prevail, she would have Azu to help her out, but not against anyone like Nicola.

Azu knew this perfectly well and couldn't fight Nicola with her full attention because she was worried about her one and only friend. She wouldn't dare call Mei a hindrance for that reason, but it was something that Nicola could take full advantage of to even the odds. It only meant that Azu had to fight the odds, and it's not as if she hadn't done that before and walked out victorious.

Nicola and Azu both momentarily adjusted their positions before leaping at each other. Mei could only cower against a wall as fragments of bullets flew past her, some cutting her superficially. Azu was trying her best to keep Mei from being injured at all, but she could clearly see that Mei was slowly being injured.

The little voice within came forth, saying, _**It's not working. Your efforts are for naught. You aren't able to protect her.**_

Initially ignoring it, citing the need to focus, Azu kept trying harder to block all the bullets and fragments. However, the harder she tried, the sloppier she got because she was losing focus. And the sloppier she got, the more Nicola took advantage and made everything worse for Azu.

 _ **See? You're not helping in the slightest. You were bad before. Now you're even worse. You're just plain useless.**_

Slowly losing it, Azu brought forth a second sword to take in her other hand and began swinging with everything she knew and could muster in the moment. Had she been stable, it would've worked splendidly, but she was currently quaking with frustration and the worry of not being able to protect Mei. Again, there was no way she could blame Mei, but she was beginning to lose the battle and things were getting more desperate.

 _ **Just give up.**_

 _Be quiet…_ Azu thought back at it.

 _ **You know you can't do anything now.**_

 _Shut up…_

 _ **You can't seem to accept your reality.**_

 _Shut up._

 _ **You can't protect Mei.**_

 _Shut up! Shut up!_ Azu's eye was twitching with annoyance and anger at that point.

 _ **You've failed her.**_

 _SHUT THE FUCK UP!_

And at that, Azu lost it. Her movements became irrational and she started to miss bullets. She got multiple times throughout her body, but more importantly, bullets were beginning to fly at Mei.

At the expense of her own body, Azu was able to protect Mei for about half a minute before a bullet got Mei in the leg.

 _ **See? Do you really need more proof?**_

 _You… just shut up…_

Recognizing the events as a sign of failure, Azu began to tear up for the first time in years. Before, nothing could get to her, but Mei just meant way too much to Azu. Her entire world consisted of herself and Mei and nothing else mattered. She knew that being so attached to a single person had its immense risks, but she didn't want to think about that. All that mattered was Mei.

And now, for Azu to see Mei being injured due to her failure, her entire body was shaking in a mess of emotions. With blurry visions and uncoordinated movements, she pressed on, but in vain. Azu was easily shot in the head, stopping her for half a second with the impact was stopped by her reinforced skull. But during that half second, Nicola shot Mei dead in the center of her forehead, twice.

As Azu turned to see Mei bleeding from the head, lifeless, the entire mess of emotion within her exploded in a firestorm. Everything from the hate towards Nicola for murdering Mei to the happiness of all the memories she had made with Mei. Simultaneously, the orb of swirling light still lying in the ground began to rapidly expand.

Just about as Azu was about to unleash a hell storm on Nicola, the orb of light engulfed the entire room, blinding Azu and Nicola alike. Azu still knew where Nicola was, but she couldn't move. Somehow, the light was restricting her movements and she was trapped in place. In truth, it was the fact that Azu was the user of the magic being displayed that prevented her from moving because the spell was that taxing on the body - not that Azu would've known that.

When the light finally cleared, Azu looked to find that she was the only one left in the room. Mei had disappeared and Nicola wasn't even in Italy anymore. Dropping to the floor, Azu burst fully into tears, mourning the loss of her one and only friend, regretting that she wasn't good enough to have prevented her death.

 _ **And now you understand.**_

In an instant, she threw her sword through her reinforced skull. Anything to just make that voice shut up.

For the rest of the night, she just lay there, listening to the voice, unable to do anything.

 _Mei…_

 **\\\ End Flashback \\\**

"What's wrong?" Mavis suddenly asked.

"Huh?" Taking a moment to realize her surroundings, Azu found herself curled into a ball on the sofa, tears streaming down her face. "Oh… I was just remembering something from a while ago."

"Should I ask?" Mavis questioned hesitantly.

"Maybe another time," Azu responded. Motioning with her arm at the TV, she said, "There's still a show to watch, after all."

With a last, worried glance, Mavis refocused her attention to the show. Relieved that she didn't have to explain her situation to Mavis just yet, Azu turned her attention towards the TV as well, but not before she had one last fleeting thought.

 _Mei…_


	8. Prone to Existence

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.**

 **A/N: I do not promote nor do I degrade any forms of religion. My apologies if some are offended by some aspects that might be considered as pertaining to religion in the plot from here on out.**

* * *

 **/ Era /**

"We are gathered here today to discuss the current situation regarding the Dark Guilds throughout Ishgar," Gran Doma began, receiving grim nods from the other councilmembers. "As I'm sure you know, the first-ranked Wizard Saint has been… 'taking care of' some our major pains as of late. However, the remaining top Dark Guilds, with the exception of Tartaros, have only grown more defiant as a result. For example, there have been dozens of vicious murders in the northern mountains in the last couple weeks, courtesy of Amarok Fang."

"So… the fools from Iceberg are getting even more aggressive," a short man half whispered. "As if they weren't enough of a threat to society as is…"

"Indeed, but I, unfortunately, have even worse news related to Amarok Fang," Gran Doma continued. "It was only just this morning that I received word of a specific incident regarding Amarok Fang within the borders of Fiore."

"Don't tell me that they're looking for an alliance with Tartaros," a middle-aged woman huffed in the back, clearly disapproving of the thought.

"Could it be that they've actually adopted a system that somewhat resembles teamwork?" Another member asks, his works dripping in a strangely serious sarcasm.

"Need we be so negatively inclined?" Yet another member questions. "While it would indeed be troubling if the usual loners, who are dangerous enough on their own, started to work together, it is unreasonable that they would jump to the step of asking Tartaros for assistance. They _are_ known to be lone killers-"

He was cut off by a loud cough coming from Org, who grumbled in annoyance, "How about you actually _listen_ to the report before you starting letting your imaginations run wild? Does that seem reasonable to all of you?"

Taking the following seconds of silence as a 'yes' to Org's second question, Gran Doma once again spoke: "I fear that the news is worse than what any of you would've dared to imagine. The report details the movements of a squadron of Rune Knights tailing a dark mage from Amarok Fang in the area surrounding the Sacred Mountain, only to spot him being thrown off the mountain when they were near its summit. When the Rune Knights looked for the one responsible for said action, they found _**him**_ …"

At the mention of _**him**_ , the entire room seemed to freeze. With only one word and not even a specific name mentioned, they all knew who it was. As soon as they knew who it was, they all froze in shock, terror, fear, anger, and all negative emotions imaginatively possible. All of them had their reasons for their feelings, whether it be that they were terrified of the implications of _**him**_ being active or the fact that _**he**_ dared to touch the Sacred Mountain or pretty much anything else.

When the shock subsided, Org asked in a low voice, "Mysterious as she is, we have all witnessed for ourselves the potential of the first-ranked Wizard Saint."

Breaking out of their dazes, the rest of the members and the chairman nodded in agreement. Noting their agreement, Org continued, "Should we ask for her to do something about _**him**_?"

After another silence and a lot of silent exchanges of glances, one of the more reasonable councilmembers muttered, "It might be the only thing we can do against _**him**_ …"

* * *

 **/ Crocus /**

Back in Azu's house, Azu was on her sofa with Mavis, as they had done just about every day for the past month. The only difference now was that they were asleep, for it had been a long night.

Among other things, Azu had learned that she had lost her ability to shut off her emotions completely as she had so frequently done on Earth following Mei's untimely death. It was as if she was not only a child physically, but also somewhat mentally in the sense that she didn't have full reign over her emotions. Her emotions were freer than they had been in years, for she found herself in a position more comparable to a teenager.

For the past month, Azu and Mavis had been watching hour after hour, day after day of anime, taking healthy breaks in between to talk about what they'd seen and rest their eyes, even if Mavis was an entity of pure magic whose pupilless eyes didn't need to rest. Unlike the first anime that they had watched together, most of the shows didn't actually cause Azu to revisit her memories of Mei that would cause her to lose her reigns. Together, they laughed at the comedic situations and when dumb things happened, they smiled warmly at touching moments, and they cried where just about anyone would.

But last night was just a little different. They had just finished a very heart-wrenching series that left both of them in a pile of tears, but unfortunately, Azu had the added sorrow of being reminded of Mei throughout the sad bits of the show. Mavis had fixed herself up and stopped crying after a few minutes, but Azu was merely a lump on the floor with a physical puddle forming around her for hours. It didn't help at all that Azu's mental companion kept feeding her thoughts that brought her even more pain.

If she had her reigns, she wouldn't have started crying at all, but with those gone, she was free to let loose everything that she had held in for years. She still had enough control to stop herself from wailing, but nothing in her power was able to stop the tears from flowing down her face. Mavis had grown worried after Azu hadn't stopped crying after twenty minutes and had then proceeded to try and figure out what was wrong.

Eventually, out of the bond and trust that had grown between the two in the two months that Azu had been on Earthland, Azu had managed to choke out her story through her mess of tears, although leaving out or replacing the parts that she though Mavis would've found too disturbing. She eventually ended up on a broken rant about how she couldn't do anything to protect Mei, although Mavis refuted her overly negative claims about herself. In turn, Azu kept denying what Mavis said, but Mavis continued trying to support her nonetheless.

In the end, Azu finally calmed down thanks to Mavis's comfort and support, but they were both utterly mentally exhausted from the ordeal - Azu from crying and ranting and Mavis from trying to get Azu to stop and calm down. Even if Mavis was the equivalent of a ghost, there was only so much she would be able to take before needing a break.

As the light began to show through the windows of Azu's bedroom, the pair began to stir. Both sitting up from their positions, Azu turned with her face still a mess towards Mavis and said the first two words that came to mind: "Thank you." To her credit, Mavis smiled weakly in her exhaustion.

Jolted alert by a loud knocking at her front door, Azu excused herself from Mavis's side before quickly fixing up her disheveled appearance and running to the door. Opening the door, she was faced with a Rune Knight, to whom she tiredly quipped, "Finally come to arrest me, have you?"

Apparently not in the mood for a joke, the Rune Knight sighed and simply handed a box to Azu before leaving. Frowning at the lack of a verbal response to her remark, she opened the box to find only a single piece of paper.

 _Investigate and Eliminate_

 _Investigate a very powerful menace near the Sacred Mountain, otherwise known as Mt. Zonia._

 _If deemed necessary, which would be in most cases, eliminate the menace._

 _If possible, also eliminate Amarok Fang (the Dark Guild from Iceberg)._

 _Reward: 500,000,000 Jewels_

 _Now that's just a_ little _bit ridiculous for a reward,_ Azu thought. _I guess this thing has to be quite strong and disturbing for the Council to be willing to give up so much to get rid of it…_ _But the second request on the sheet does remind me of the fact that I haven't been doing any killing since I started catching up on anime with Mavis._

Returning to her bedroom with her thoughts, Azu called to Mavis and told her, "The Magic Council apparently wants me to do its dirty and dangerous work somewhere around Mount Zonia, although the reward is a nice half-billion Jewels. Just to top it off, they didn't tell me anything about the target. Although, I guess I should expect strange and ridiculous things from the ones who have the gall to call one of your members 'cute' in their official files…"

"Well, you _have_ been cooped up in your home with me for the last month, so some 'exercise', as you'd probably call it, wouldn't hurt, would it?" Mavis replied, albeit with her ahoge drooping in disappointment at the fact that Azu wouldn't be around to keep her company.

Noticing this, Azu quickly noted, "You can come along if you want to, Mavis. You're made of magic, so it should be safe for you to come along."

At this, Mavis gave a wide small and jumped up from her position on the sofa, leaping towards where Azu was standing. And together, they disappeared from the room without a trace.

* * *

 **/ A Beach East of Hargeon /**

 _To Fairy Tail,_

 _Come to the suspension bridge deep in the West Woods._

That was the note that had been tied to a pigeon that landed on Erza's head. Team Natsu, Juvia, and Levy had just spent the last one and a half (Earthland) months in the Celestial Spirit World, which turned out to be only half a day there. In their shocked dazes as they returned to Earthland realizing that they had just lost half of their training time in one go, they had been delivered a letter with no known origins, but they chose to follow its instructions regardless.

Now deep in the forest and joined by Jet and Droy, they quickly found… nothing.

"Nobody's here… What the hell?" Natsu shouted as he slammed his fist into his palm, frustrated.

"Was it a prank…?" Gray questioned quietly in annoyance.

Worried, Lucy complained to them, "I told you we shouldn't have come…"

But just as soon as they came up to the broken drawbridge, it began to fix itself into a condition that showed no signs of age. This came as a shock to all present, all of whom shouted out various exclamations relating to the little 'miracle' they just witnessed.

Soon after, Erza commented, "This must be our invitation." Although, that note seemed to be ignored by Levy, who worried, "This might be a trap after all…"

Holding Carla, Wendy whispered, "I'd rather not have to go through _that_ again…", to which her Exceed asked, "Go through _what_ again, child?" Caught off guard, Wendy quickly spluttered, "Nothing…"

Turning attention his way, Natsu declared, "I don't know who it could be, but let's go for it!"

As they continued forward, they eventually saw three hooded figures straight ahead of them, a considerable distance away. All stopping at once, Lucy shouted, "Someone's here!" while Juvia added, "Be on your guard!"

On their guard, the Fairy Tail mages waited as the three hooded figures walked slowly towards them. Once their faces were in viewing distance, the expressions of the Fairies turned from those of alertness to those of surprise and disbelief. Beads of sweat formed in anticipation as the hooded figures walked closer still until the middle spoke.

"Thank you for coming," he began as the three figures removed their hoods, revealing a distinctly recognizable tattoo under the speaker's right eye. "Fairy Tail…"

"Jellal…" Erza uttered in her state of disbelief.

"You haven't changed one bit, Erza…" Jellal replied. "So, I'm sure you've all heard about my jailbreak by now, though to be honest… it's not what I had planned."

"Meredy and I broke him out," the woman to Jellal's left added.

"I didn't do anything," the one named Meredy refuted. "You did it mostly by yourself, Ultear."

"Jellal escaped?!" Lucy asked, perturbed, to which Natsu added, "These guys are from Grimoire Heart…"

"Wait… That makes them our enemies… Isn't that right?" Gray asked to Ultear, who could only put on a sad smile.

"Yes. The sins I've committed throughout my life are many… Even if I spent my entire life atoning, it wouldn't be enough…" she began. "So… I want to at least save as many people that I encounter throughout my life as I can. For example, Jellal."

With that, some mild conversations broke out between the Fairy Tail and Crime Sorcière mages to catch up just a little bit between each other, although only until Ultear caught everyone's attention once again.

"... So… The reason we summoned you here was not just to introduce ourselves… We've heard that you're entering the Grand Magic Games." she started. "We can't come too close to the event grounds for obvious reasons, so it would appear that we have a favor to ask of you. Every year, during the Games… I've felt a strange magical force… I want to identify the source of that magic."

"A lot of Fiore's guilds are going to be there, correct? There's surely going to be one or two suspicious magical forces…" Lucy doubted.

"I thought that at first as well… But this magic had an evil presence to it, like Zeref's," Jellal answered. "Perhaps the presence is coming from us since we've been so close to Zeref, so we'd like you to help identify the source to make sure that it's not just us."

"We want to know the true source of this magical force," Ultear added. "From that, we might be able to track down where Zeref is."

 _And what are you going to do once you track him down?_ Wendy wondered to herself.

"Of course, winning or losing is a different story. We're going to be cheering on Fairy Tail from the shadows," Meredy noted. "But in the meantime, please search for the source of the mysterious magic."

"It sounds like you're on a wild goose chase, but we'll help you out," Erza responded, ignoring Gray as he questioned her judgment and gladly taking Ultear's appreciative comment. "I feel uneasy about a mysterious magical force that could be a threat to us as well."

Smiling, Ultear said, "We'll give you your compensation up-front." Although she didn't quite expect the shouts of delight that immediately came from Lucy and Natsu/Happy of "RENT MONEY!" and "FOOD MONEY!", respectively. Sweatdropping, she corrected them, "Err… I didn't mean money… With my new and improved Time Arc, I can raise the level of your ability."

A weak "Eh?" was all she was met with. Undeterred, she explained, "A power-up… I guess it's fine to think of it that way, but it's a bit different. Every mage has something like a contained inside of them that determines the limits of their magical power. In the case that the container becomes empty, Ethernano from the atmosphere is absorbed by the body and after a while, the container is filled once again. However… recent studies have identified a part of that contained that normally isn't used: A dormant potential inside of everyone… Second Origin. My Time Arc can evolve your containers so that they're capable of using Second Origin. In other words, it will give you a giant boost to your magical powers, even more than any of the training you've done until now."

At this, the Fairy Tail mages roared, "YEAAAAAAAH!" Just until Ultear had to ruin it for a few of them by mentioning, "But… you're going to have to endure pain greater than your wildest imaginations."

That didn't stop Natsu from rushing into Ultear and giving her a thankful hug (with his face in her breasts without a care in the world), shouting about how she seemed more and more like a woman. Of course, both of these actions irked her slightly for different reasons, but she could stand it for just a bit. After all, she would remember to tortur- _gift_ Natsu first later on.

* * *

 **/ Mount Zonia /**

About halfway up the mountain stood Azu and Mavis, looking up at the slopes covered in a never-melting layer of snow. Mavis's dress was billowing in the furious wind while Azu had on a long black coat that was rippling similarly behind her. The coat was pretty much just a habit from before she could control her immediate environment - from before she didn't need a coat to be perfectly comfortable in the frigid cold.

Turning her head towards Mavis, Azu sighed, "I haven't sensed anything as malicious as the Council vaguely described… What about you?"

"I haven't felt anything unusual just yet either," she agreed. "But I do feel like someone has been drunk here not so long ago…"

"Here?" Azu doubted, seeing as not just anyone would be crazy enough to get drunk on a mountain that never stops snowing - and on the Sacred Mountain of all mountains. _Why is this particular mountain sacred anyways?_ She wondered.

"I'm quite certain that my senses are correct, although I agree with what you're probably thinking in regards to how it's strange," Mavis confirmed.

Interesting, Azu asked, "What was the probability of my thought process being as you predicted?"

"About a 73% chance, so I just took the risk and assumed that I was correct," Mavis replied, beaming in her mild recklessness, which in turn caused Azu to smile. Mavis's smiles were just contagious for Azu that way.

Continuing their ascent, Mavis eventually spotted a trail of faint footprints, half covered by the falling snow. Even if they were somewhat hidden, they seemed to show signs of struggling against the whipping winds, which was all the more reason to find the circumstances to be unreasonable. Drunk, on a snowy mountain, struggling against the winds…

In any case, the footsteps eventually led to a cave that absolutely reeked. Firstly and most overwhelmingly, it stunk of alcohol. Perhaps it could've been the case that Mavis could sense the alcohol from halfway down the mountain because it was so strong up here and not necessarily because they were on the trail of someone who had been drunk. Secondly, but not any more subtly, the cave was very clearly radiating the _oh-so-sweet_ aroma of death from within. Adding to the effects of the aroma, Azu found a severed arm a few feet from the mouth of the cave with the guild mark of Amarok Fang on its upper section.

Picking it up, she walked back over to Mavis, who was desperately trying not to inhale either of the two powerful aromas, and nonchalantly said, "I found this not too far away. It looks like it bitten down on and then ripped off of its previous owner."

Clearly not liking what she was looking at, Mavis covered her eyes and made a bunch of incoherent mumbling noises, her ahoge spinning around rapidly in discomfort. Giving a bit of a laugh to both Mavis's dislike of gore and to her own twisted self's lack of discomfort, Azu casually buried the arm in the snow so that Mavis wouldn't have to be bothered by it.

Eventually, Azu was able to persuade Mavis to set foot in the cave, which only showed a sort of bloodstained platform before it sloped sharply into the darkness. Collecting a sphere of Pure Dragon Slayer Magic, Azu formed a ball of bright light in her hand so that the pair would be able to see as they descended into the cave. Mavis could easily fly (by means of levitating and moving at the same time) since she had a body of magic and Azu had made an enhancement for herself in a previous year that allowed her to do the same without magic, so the pair could travel at high speeds through the cave tunnels.

As they sped through the dark, Azu began to detect a magical force that was easily far stronger than anything that God Serena could've ever managed. Mavis had apparently sensed the same, but she was a lot more stressed for reasons beyond Azu's current understanding. Sure, she could've figured it out easily if she wanted to, but that was too much effort for the time being. Maybe Mavis would spill her thoughts later without Azu having to pry.

After what seemed like forever, even at their great speed of travel, the two finally saw a dim source of light in the distance. Rushing to its source, they were slowly feeling the pressure of more and more magical power, which began to bother Mavis but not so much Azu.

 _This magic signature is beginning to feel a little too much like-_ Mavis began to speculate, although she abruptly cut herself off when she entered the room from which the light was coming from. After she rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing things, her gaze turned dark as she faced the room's inhabitant.

Noticing the odd change in her usually very cheery and upbeat friend, Azu tried to calm her down and restore her rationale by pointing out, "Despite whatever bad experiences you might associate with your would-be opponent, it should be kept in mind that they're very clearly drunk and that doesn't bode well for you."

 _Wait, since when have I tried to avoid conflict?_ Azu suddenly found herself questioning her actions. _Maybe I'm growing soft from having a friend again…_

Taking into account what Azu had said, Mavis lost the dark glare but kept her stare cold, telling Azu, "There are too many unknowns to calculate my chances of even landing a hit, never mind giving the pummeling I'd quite like to give."

 _I guess that response is good enough…_ Azu thought as she picked up an unopened bottle of what seemed a lot like vodka. As she opened it to take a drink, which would be the first in a long time, she was rudely interrupted by a ferret growl. Turning towards the room's inhabitant, Azu gave it an unenthusiastic wave of her hand in order to get rid of all the alcohol in its body, all the while chugging the vodka like there was no tomorrow.

 _Now that… that was pretty damn good,_ Azu mentally judged. _Maybe I'll do some exotic liquor shopping later on - and it's a good thing that I modified myself so that I can't get drunk._

When Azu had rid the alcohol from the body of the drunk, it had begun to bleed out purple and black light, slowly changing into another, smaller, form. When the impromptu light show finally stopped, a girl could be seen sitting in the middle of a pile of bottles, dazed and confused. A simple and quick name and alias check told Azu more than enough:

 _{Alice Acnologia - The Dragon Queen}_

That would explain the change in Mavis's behavior, being that the massive, drunk, purple and black dragon that had stood before them had been the one to attack Fairy Tail on Tenrou Island, the devastation from which was seen by Azu almost as soon as she arrived on Earthland. Speaking of said dragon, it had turned into a girl that looked no more than eleven years old who was only beginning to stir, giving Azu ample time to see if the Magic Council had any files on her.

 _Acnologia:_

 _{The Black Dragon of the Apocalypse - The Dragon King … a black dragon with round scales and purple markings … terrorized Earthland over 400 years ago in the age where dragons still existed … last sighted on Tenrou Island seven years ago.}_

 _Well, the Council most certainly doesn't always have the most accurate information…_ Azu joked, noting how they only knew her last name and not even so much as the fact that she was a girl, and therefore the _Queen_.

By the time Azu was done laughing to herself, the girl had fully woken up and was staring right at Azu's amused face. Realizing this, Azu stared back and asked, "Yes? What is it?"

"Who are you and what am I doing here?" She asked, confused but not feeling particularly endangered.

 _So, I guess she doesn't remember anything from when she was drunk - not to mention that her blood alcohol level was at one which shouldn't be survivable,_ Azu concluded. "I'll get to that in a little bit, but can you answer a couple of questions first?"

"Okay?" The girl only grew more confused.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Alice Acnologia and I'm 11 years old."

"What year is it?"

"X365, I think…"

 _Well, I was right about her age, but apparently, she has a blank of 426 years in her memory,_ Azu thought. "Well, first of all, it's actually X791. Second of all, if you look around, you'll see all the alcohol around you. That would be the reason that you were here, or so I'm assuming. Additionally, you recently killed someone, as it seems, which brings me to your question of who we are. I'm Azu Yami and I was requested to deal with a 'menace' on this mountain that was particularly dangerous, which turned out to be you. I'm not sure if she's visible to you, but if she is, the one next to me giving you the cold stare is Mavis Vermillion. She has a great distaste for your existence because you attacked her guild seven years ago."

"?" Was Alice's only initial response as she cocked her head to the side in even greater confusion. "But I don't remember any of that and there's no way I've been alive for 437 years…"

Mavis eased up a bit, calculating that the attack on Tenrou Island had a 57% chance of not being with malicious intent given what she'd heard so far. However, she was still far from forgiving Acnologia entirely, if this was indeed the Black Dragon.

Noticing Mavis's slight relaxation, Azu walked up to Alice and cupped her hands around Alice's head. "It'll take a while, but I can restore your memories if you'd like."

Responding to a nod from Alice, Azu focused herself on the structure of Alice's brain, meticulously noting the positions and movements of each and every molecule. Azu's computational power is crazy fast, yes, but the sheer number of molecules in the brain and the care with which they had to be handled meant that this would be no easy or quick process. It took more or less an hour to complete that first step. Luckily, the second step wasn't so hard, for it was a 'revitalization' spell that could cure even amnesia. Azu had found out about and mastered it when she was playing around with her Dragon Slayer Magics quite some time ago, so it wouldn't be a problem to cast at all. The only thing that bothered her was that the spell was in Latin, which was becoming an all too common occurrence.

Focusing some of her magical energy, she whispered, **"Sea King Dragon's Salutem: Memoria Restituet."**

Two blue orbs appeared in Azu's hands and merged into one the size of Alice's head, only then to disappear into her head. For only a surprisingly short amount of time, a mere ten seconds, Alice's eyes glazed over as over 400 years worth of memories came back to her. When she was done reliving her memories, she sat up sharply and shouted "OH!" in realization.

"Uhh… There's a lot to go through, but I guess I should apologize first," she decided as she scratched her head and gave an awkward laugh. Apparently able to see Mavis despite not being a member of Fairy Tail, just like Azu had been able to do, Alice turned fully towards Mavis before continuing. "I have no idea how to start, really… But I should probably mention that it wasn't actually me who's been doing everything with my body for the last… 426 years, I think."

Sensing that she was most certainly telling the truth, Mavis lost her coldness towards Alice and muttered in surprise, "Possession Magic? But who could possibly be so powerful as to possess a dragon, especially with your power?..."

"Well, based on the memories I just regained, I met someone who claimed to be 'the one all-powerful God' in a dream, but then he put a sort of curse on me when I said that other gods existed and that I didn't believe in his existence. Basically, he said he would take control over my mind and body until I became faithful," Alice explained.

"... In the spell I used to get your memories back, the part that wasn't in Fioran, do you know what I said?" Azu asked Alice with a hint of an emotion that neither Mavis nor Alice could identify.

"It meant 'Health: Restore Memory' in a dead language we refer to as 'Glóssa tou Theoú', although I have no idea what that means," Alice answered.

 _Abundant Latin in this world… Someone claiming to be the one all-powerful God… Latin being referred to as "the language of God" in Greek… Ancient Greek mythology being present in the form of its gods… Fioran being so similar to Japanese…_ Azu listed off. _There are too many connections to Earth to disregard the possibility that this "God" exists…_

"Do you still believe that this 'God' doesn't exist?" Azu asked Alice tentatively.

"Of course I don't believe in his existence, even after hundreds of years."

"Well… I think he does actually exist," Azu replied, albeit with a bit of hesitation.

"Wait, what? Are you religious?" Alice 'accused', surprised that such a being could exist.

"No, quite the opposite. I'm an atheist, but I come from another world. In that world, we have many things similar to this world - too many to have come up here coincidentally without interference from a 'higher order of being'," Azu defended. "The language you call 'Glóssa tou Theoú' is known as Latin in that world and is also a dead language. 'Glóssa tou Theoú' itself means 'the language of God' in a language from that world known as 'Greek'. In that world, Latin is currently the official language of the people who represent God's will on the planet (in a certain religion), so it could also be called 'the language of God' in its own right. Two of the gods in Greek myths are present on this continent as leaders of their respective Dark Guilds, bringing up the Greek connections once again. Furthermore, the language spoken in Fiore is too similar to a language known as 'Japanese' to be purely coincidental. I'm practically ranting at this point, but that planet is called 'Earth' and this one is called 'Earthland', which is too similar once again."

After a silence of a few seconds, Alice asked, "So… what you're saying is that an omnipotent God probably exists, but you're not saying that the one I met is him?"

"That's just about right, I suppose. Although I think Mavis might've calculated the chances of the two 'God's being the same one by now," Azu pointed out.

Her wing ornaments flapping proudly, she calculated, "Considering the power you have, an even greater amount of power must've been used to control you even at the heights of your strength, so there's a 92% chance that the two are the same."

Remembering something, Azu mentioned, "By the way, what were the conditions of the curse that was placed on you?"

"Alcohol?..." she asked herself, straining her face. "Not sure. Maybe the curse could only be broken if I didn't have any alcohol in me, so another part of the curse could've been that I would be drawn to alcohol?"

"Well, whatever the case, you seem to be freed of the curse and…" Azu trailed off. "You're completely naked…"

Slowly looking down, Alice realized that she was indeed completely lacking clothes and gave a small squeak before instinctively covering herself however she could. _Oh, right… That won't help because I've been like this for a while,_ she reminded herself. _At least they're both girls…_

Materializing a purple dress with black outlines, along with a handful of other articles of clothing, Azu handed Alice an outfit to wear temporarily. Thankful, Alice put everything on rather quickly before looking back at Azu as if waiting for a sign of what would happen next.

However, it was Mavis that spoke up next, sighing, "I can't speak for everyone in Fairy Tail, but I suppose that I can't blame you for something for you had no control over in the end. I would like to ask one question, though. Why'd your body attack Tenrou Island in the first place, or was there no reason behind it other than a lack of control?"

Pondering for a few seconds, Alice responded, "I think I sensed a lot of alcohol on someone on the island and my curse drove me to get to the alcohol any way I could, but attacking it to get to it doesn't make sense…"

"Well, one of the guild members, Cana, is quite the drinker," Mavis mentioned, slightly amused.

"Drunk versus drunk, but the former-drunk in front of us right now easily won, I guess," Azu mocked, before turning her tone to a serious one. "However, jokes aside, I still have to take care of the request I mentioned earlier, which includes taking care of you, Alice. I won't be 'eliminating' you as the request recommended, but it didn't say that I necessarily had to either. Instead, you can live with me - only if you want to, though. There's also a part of this request that I'm sure you won't like, Mavis, but I think it'd be good for Alice, so here is where we'll part."

"I'll take my leave since I have to think about how to break this surprising news to the rest of the guild anyway," Mavis replied. "Have fun, you two!"

After Mavis had disappeared into thin air, Azu muttered, "'Have fun', she says…"

"Hm?" Alice hummed in confusion, tilting her head.

"Alright then… How do you feel about murdering people?" Azu asked Alice in a very casual tone.

Jumping a little in surprise and fearing what the question was a precursor to, she answered, "Just because my body under a curse has killed a lot of things doesn't mean that I'm willing to kill people."

Azu hung her head and heavily sighed, "You're still normal then… Oh well, but you're still coming with me to beat up some serial killers. You won't have to kill them."

And just as Alice was relieved that she wouldn't have to consciously kill, Azu ruined it with a quick, "I'll wait for you to finish and then kill them."

And with that, Azu teleported herself and Alice to her home in Crocus, but not before the latter could let out a small sigh of relief.


	9. Fallen Sun

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.**

* * *

"Even with so much magic potential, simply overwhelming opponents with that power isn't going to cut it at some point," Azu commented lazily from her spot on an overhead cliff as she watched Alice randomly strike a burly member of Amarok Fang. Azu had been leading Alice through the mountain ranges of northern Ishgar in search all remaining members of Amarok Fang. In addition to completing the Council's second request, the fact that Alice was fighting against Amarok Fang could earn her some points, if only a few, with the Magic Council so that they would be only a little more trusting that Alice wouldn't be a danger to them any longer. After all, Azu couldn't just bring in the infamous Acnologia and expect everything to go just fine, could she?

"And what do you mean by _that_?" Alice whined as she knocked her opponent into a lump of his 'Cursed Ice', rendering him unconscious. After all, it wasn't as if she wasn't trying and the fact that Azu was just kicking back didn't make her take the comment any better.

Jumping down from the cliff and softly landing next to Alice, Azu continued, "You're just hitting wherever your limbs connect with first, occasionally alternating between them, without too much thought or care for where they actually hit. Am I wrong?"

Looking down at the dark mage's unmoving body, Alice laughed awkwardly and answered, "Sorta… But isn't that good enough?"

"For someone like him," Azu said as she pointed at the body, "it'll be good enough, but just being 'good enough' isn't a good mindset to have." _How hypocritical of me…_ "Also, it'll save you a lot of strength and energy if you don't just attack randomly."

"I see…" Alice stated as she stared deep into Azu's eyes, looking like a child eager to learn. "So, what should I do then?"

"I suppose there are only a few basic concepts that I like to go by, but I have nothing against you creating your own ideas based off of them. I'd assume that you would rather not use my techniques to their full extent because they usually end in the death of the opponent, where you said that you'd rather not have to consciously kill," Azu began thoughtfully. "First, you should aim for weak spots rather than just anywhere on your opponent. Second, you should watch for what movement your opponent will make next so that you can counter it, as opposed to just ignoring their actions and continuing to attack. Third, you might want to stop talking or shouting in the middle of your fights… I don't know what it is with talking in the middle of fighting here, but it's seriously stupid because it takes away your concentration away from the fight and leaves you more vulnerable."

And… Alice was having an intense stare-off with a butterfly that had landed on her nose. "Fourth, pay attention rather than getting distracted," Azu forcibly added as she lay her head to rest in her hands, shaking her head in a twinge of disappointment. When Alice still did not take her eyes off of the butterfly, Azu impatiently resorted to a form of the telekinesis she had developed on Earth to remove the butterfly from its position. However, in that impatient impulse, she had forgotten her little rule of trying to mask all of her 'unnatural' actions as magic. It's not as if she had to worry about the attention her abnormalities would receive, but rather it was the consequences of said attention that worried her - that is, if she had learned anything from her life on Earth. Having black blood and revealing that was one thing, but being able to control matter without magic was just something that could not be ignored nor passed up on.

Seemingly unconcerned that her childish game had been abruptly ended, Alice asked in wonder, "You can use telekinesis without a motion to tell your target where to go?"

 _In light of the fact that she acts so much like a young child, it's easy to forget that she's lived for centuries and has practically infinite knowledge in comparison to others here. In the meanwhile, I'm here in the body of a 12-year-old with the knowledge of someone that shouldn't be allowed to exist and the mindset of a late-teenager. We're two of a kind, I guess…_ Azu thought to herself. _To answer her question, should I tell her the truth and trust her not to go and blab or do I just use the old "I'm just that skilled" spiel? … Well, both make me look like an asshole - not to say that isn't exactly inaccurate - but at least the first one doesn't make me look arrogant. I guess I'll just go with the option of telling her and hoping that she won't tell others freely. Hopefully, she'll understand why I wouldn't just tell everyone without me having to tell her…_

Wrapping up her thoughts, she revealed, "In truth, that wasn't actually magic. Just like how you can turn into a dragon despite being human, I also have some drastic differences with my body that allow me to go far beyond the usual abilities of humans." At a slow but understanding nod from Alice, she continued. "In this case, I materialized a barrier created from the surrounding atmosphere that separated the butterfly from the rest of the world down to the last atom and used that to safely send it flying far away."

At this second part, Alice only gave Azu a questioning look, asking, "What's an atom?"

Only a little surprised that Alice didn't know, Azu began, "Not that it's really important for you to know right now, but an atom is the basic uni-" _**Obviously, the people of this world don't have the understanding of science that even some of the most worthless whelps on Earth did. Not even knowing how the world is held together… They probably think it's just magic that everything works the way it does! It's absolutely a miracle that they have steel without even knowing how it's made, never mind the fact that they use it abundantly! And the fact that-**_

"Oi, shut up…" Azu muttered. "Just because you agreed to not go and insult me for a while doesn't mean you can interrupt me when you feel like it to rant, no matter how much I might agree with the basic principles of what you're saying."

 _ **Oh, but it doesn't imply that I can't go and do that either and you even admitted that you agree-**_ "I did not-" _ **with what I said-**_ "Just go away-" … _**nope. It's amusing to see the one you call 'Alice' looking at you as if you've got serious issues.**_

Turning her attention to the girl in question, Alice was indeed looking at Azu with a mix of concern and curiosity. And just to top it off, she had to ask in such an innocent voice, "Are you, by chance, insane?"

Sighing internally as her little voice laughed maniacally, she simply answered, "I suppose-" _**Say yes!**_ "I can't say no-" _**Say yes!**_ "so I'll just-" _**Say YES!**_ "have to-" _**SAY YES!**_ "say yes." _**FINALLY!**_ … _Shut up._

Eyeing her with her same mixed expression, Alice cautiously voiced, "That's good to know…"

"Good, but don't expect me to be talking to myself again anytime soon because I think it's had its fun for now," Azu responded instantly, trying to move away from the topic. "And to answer your question from before, atoms are the basic unit of all physical substances - the air around us, the rocks beneath us, the two of us, and so on." Making sure that Alice understood at least somewhat, she continued, "With the entertainment out of the way, do you remember the four points I just told you about your fighting?"

Counting off her fingers, Alice listed, "One: Aim for weak spots. Two: Don't ignore what the opponent does. Three: Talk less, fight more. Four: Pay attention." Looking at Azu for reassurance, she pressed, "Was that right?"

 _It's not like she's wrong or anything - it's just incredibly simplified…_ "Close enough. As long as you show that you understand these principles when you fight from now on, that list is good enough." After a slight pause, Azu asked, "I assume you remember the weak spots of humans from your time as a drunken dragon?" A nod. "And you remember which ones can be lethal and which ones are merely to incapacitate someone?" Another nod. "Good. We'll test that on our next target."

"Who's next?" Alice asked

With a whispered **"Swords of Thanatos"** and a sword through the unconscious dark mage's heart and brain each, Azu responded, "In Amarok Fang, we've taken care of everyone except their Guild Master, although they appear to be with another Dark Guild on my hit list for the time being."

Materializing a projection of a flat-screen not too different in terms of appearance from Archive Magic, Azu brought up a map of Ishgar with labels in a few different spots. Pointing to relevant locations on the map as she went, Azu told Alice, "We started over _here_ in the southern mountains of Seven by the border with Fiore. Right now, we're _here_ in the mountains of Iceberg, near the border with Pergrande. As for where we're going next… that would be over _here_ , on the complete opposite side of the continent - the southern tip of Midi." Turning away from the map and towards Alice, she continued, "Up until now, you've only been facing one enemy at a time, even if they haven't been holding back at all. Despite the fact that you pretty easily won against all of them without trying much at all, it would be safer to try out the four things I've told you not so long ago when going against an entire guild."

"But aren't the guilds outside of Fiore mostly weaker?" Alice inquired.

"Generally, yes, but there was a rumor (that I didn't bother to authenticate) in one of the international newspapers' articles a few weeks back that said something about the Guild Master originally being from Fiore, so it would be best to show caution," Azu recalled. "Any more questions before we go?"

"Well… what kind of magic does this Guild Master use?"

"He's practically an expert of Sun Magic and has taught most of his guild Sun Magic as well," Azu answered.

"Sun Magic?..." Alice echoed.

"400 years?..."

"Hey!" Came an indignant shout. "Just because I've been alive a long time doesn't mean that I'd know everything! Maybe it's just a new kind of magic created by people who worshipped the Sun God Helios!"

"Ignoring the fact that Helios is another god-like figure known where I was originally from, that theory is quite possible…" Azu acknowledged. "Anything else?" And with a shake of Alice's head, Azu whisked them off to Midi.

* * *

It was a normal day in the port town of Seredina, Midi. The ocean off the piers was calm and all was well in the streets. People were going about their daily lives in the usual lively calm they always did. The sun shone down on them as brightly as it always did. Everyone was happy with how things were.

That said, Seredina was anything but a normal town. The people of the town were mostly mages that were all part of a single mage guild and if they weren't, they worked for said guild. The town's guild was incredibly powerful - the most powerful in the country - and the town itself was something of a playground for its mages. By saying that the ocean off the piers was calm was to say that there was a miniature sun-like star of pure magic floating not too far off the coast whose magical pressure applied on the water forced it to become completely still albeit in a boiling state. To say that all was well in the streets was to say that the black and legal markets flourished equally. To say that the people were going about their daily lives in their usual lively calm manner was to say that there were small solar flares and replica suns all over the town while the people joked and played around as if nothing was unusual, which was completely true in their views. To say that the sun shone down on them as brightly as ever… Simply put, one could not possibly imagine that phrase in the context of the town of Seredina, for the power of literally thousands of suns beat down on the town constantly.

Anyone who dared to visit the town would be, rightfully so, confused as to how the people or even the buildings themselves could survive such heat and magical pressure, but it's not like the town attracted many visitors that could've cared "minor detail". And it's not like the newest three to visit cared about these details, but they were curious nonetheless.

A little over a mile above the town hall was an expansive temporary platform with said three standing atop it. One donned black gym sweats and another wore a purple and white dress, both outfits matching the eye colors of their respective owners. The other had on a white frilly dress with a red ribbon tied in a bow around their neck, which contrasted with their deep green eyes. The one in purple turned to the one in black and asked, "That didn't feel like Teleportation Magic, so was it more of your non-magical stuff with these 'atoms' or whatever?" Receiving a nod, she pouted and remarked, "Show-off."

"Oh, and I asked Mavis if she wanted to come along to see how you'd handle something like this," the one in black told the one in purple. "She came along wanting to see if what she was going to say to her guild about you and not killing had merit and plus, it would be a real pain to explain to the Magic Council how you're not a blood-thirsty dragon if you went and razed the town."

"So, keep damage at a minimum while fighting an entire town full of serial arsonists and murderers that use a very potent kind of magic?" Mavis interjected.

"I didn't say that and if I did, I didn't mean it that way," the one in black corrected. "All I mean is that there should be no civilian casualties. From what you've told me, Mavis, your guild members can be pretty destructive at times. The Council deals with all that in some way or another and they still haven't disbanded your guild, so how different could it be Alice here if we eventually drag her along to Fairy Tail?" Sneaking a look, a hasty "Only if you want to come, that is," was given in the direction of Alice.

"Of course I'll come with you, Azu," Alice consented happily. Lowering both her head and voice, she mumbled, "It's not like I have other friends or anything to go with…"

Giving her a slap on the back with a wide smile, Azu added, "Great! Now we know you'll be coming with us, but we've still got work ahead of us. While you're out fighting every last person in town, I'll go and find out what the Guild Master of Amarok Fang is doing here and Mavis will be watching you 'work'. We'll meet back up here when we're all done, and yes, once everyone in town is defeated, it should be safe enough for you to transform into a dragon and fly up here, Alice - assuming you can still do that."

"I can still transform and this platform should be big enough for me," Alice affirmed before shouting "I'm off!" and jumping headfirst off of the platform.

Eyes following Alice as she plunged down towards the town, Azu turned to Mavis and told her, "Well, I ought to go as well," as she too took the plunge towards the town below. While Azu could actually fly and therefore landed gracefully near the center of the town, Alice was not so fortunate and barely managed to land on her feet a few blocks away, creating a massive crater in the process.

With the attention of the townspeople nearby on the disturbance that Alice had created, Azu nonchalantly waltzed towards the guild hall of Arcadia Leaf, which also happened to be the town hall itself. Of course, she already knew where her target was, so it wasn't hard to find the Guild Master of Amarok Fang. After all, she was sitting on the steps of the town hall, completely wasted.

As Azu walked towards her, she turned and slurred, "O' 'ey there, back fro' Minstr'l so soon?..."

"Minstrel?" Azu repeated.

"Didn't'ja say tha' ya were goin' ta go 'n' visit Blend'd Note b'fore comin' back ta ya guild 'ere?" The drunk Guild Master ran on.

"Well, ya got da wrong pers'n," Azu mocked. "I'm here to play with you and then kill you, nothing else, so hurry up and put up a fight if you've got anything in you."

Getting the message, she immediately popped up from her spot on the steps of the town hall and shouted, **"Meteor!"** Drawing two daggers made of pure magical ice from behind her, she charged Azu head-on, her daggers headed for the neck with a precision that shouldn't have been possible considering how drunk she was.

Dodging rapidly, Azu thought to herself, _This seems to fit the description of Heavenly Body Magic that the one named 'Jellal Fernandez' uses, though this obviously isn't him._ Pausing for a moment, she continued, _Now that I think of it, what's up with that Spanish sounding surname?_ And then she got a couple dagger through the neck.

 _ **And you were the one who was telling Alice to be focused and not lose her concentration while fighting.**_

 _You, be quiet. I can heal myself instantly. By the looks of it, she can't._

 _ **But it doesn't help that you're being cut to pieces as we speak, does it?**_

And indeed, Azu's head was no longer attached to the rest of her. Her limbs were all detached and were currently being minced. She couldn't help but sweatdrop at the level of pain tolerance she had to have in order to not have noticed her own decapitation.

With her body in the state that it was, it would be appropriate to note that speaking would be out of the question, so Azu could be given a pass for not using a verbal incantation for her **Heal**. However, it's like that sort of thing would've matter for the nature of her injuries, because it's extremely unrealistic to even be alive after being beheaded and chopped to shreds. For a second reason why it didn't really matter whether or not she actually said her incantations, it was pretty clear that most of the townspeople were preoccupied by Alice's ruckus, so there wouldn't be a very high chance of her being caught. However, it couldn't hurt to be careful.

Ending her deliberations with herself there, Azu used her **Heal** and like nothing at all had happened, her body was suddenly whole and undamaged. Naturally, the drunkard who had been mutilating the body all but seconds ago was taken aback, giving Azu a short window to think up a way to play with the last of Amarok Fang.

 _Well, we're in a town of predominantly Sun Magic users and I'd still like to have a larger repertoire of verbal spells… I can fuse Pure and Purgatory Dragon Slayer Magics to get a mixture of light and fire which would be close enough to Sun Magic,_ she decided. And she decided just in time to dodge the first of a new round of attacks.

Immediately, Azu followed up with a wave of her outstretched hand in the direction of the Guild Master and a commanding **"Pure Purgatory Dragon's Flare."** Just barely, the intended target shot away using her **Meteor** before Azu's version of a magical solar flare could touch her. Instead, the flare caused a nearby building to lose its street-facing facade, although somehow leaving the rest of the structure intact.

Seeing as the fight was finally beginning, the Guild Master stopped some 20 feet from Azu, threw down her daggers, and crossed her arms above her head, creating a large and intricate magic circle. Rapidly, the shadows from hundreds of feet around swarmed towards her and rose to form a small black orb that rapidly grew to resemble a black hole. Additionally, the black hole-like spell began to gravitationally attract everything around it, including light, causing it to sprout a generous number of white spots on its exterior, in turn making it resemble the night sky. Within mere seconds, the spell was complete and its user shouted, **"ALTAIRIS!"**

 _Using the names of stars to create black holes? Sure…_ Azu answered to herself before hurriedly muttering **"Pure Black Dragon's Zeta Sco"** to create her own version of a black hole that she sent flying towards her opponent. _I'll play that game as well, then,_ she resolved. _Using light and darkness to create the black hole and then using the name of a star that has ten times more mass should be good enough._ The two spells collided and Azu's **Zeta Sco** almost instantly overpowered her opponent's **Altairis** before continuing to barrel towards a rather shocked Guild Master. Unluckily for her, that shock prevented her from moving away from the spell in time and thus she was struck with full force.

Fortunately for her, however, even though such a powerful spell hit her, she would live thanks to her massive magical reserves that allowed her a healthy magical resistance. Nonetheless, she would be significantly weakened for the rest of the fight and by no means could that be considered anything other than unfortunate considering the strength of her opponent. One might still congratulate her on making it that far if it was taken into account that she was drunk and that she was facing off against the infamous 'Black Blood' - not that she had realized either of those facts.

Not skipping a moment longer than required, she charged straight for the waiting Azu once again, prepping a potent spell as she went. As she closed in, she screamed, **"Gromada Ar-"** but was cut off before she could finish

 _Polish? Japanese, Latin, Greek, and now Polish?_ _What language should I be expecting next?_ Azu questioned as she grabbed the lower area of the drunk woman's face with both hands, forcing her mouth shut and thus canceling the spell. Deciding playtime was over, Azu cupped the face of the Guild Master stiffly and whispered in a deathly quiet, **"Pure Purgatory Dragon's Hypernova."**

The magic from Azu's spell coursed through the body of the Guild Master of Amarok Fang, building up in all places possible as more and more Ethernano poured directly into her head from the hands of the First-Ranked Wizard Saint. Eventually, so much of it built up that it caused Azu's opponent to explode before her - letting the spell stay true to its name. Of course, the explosion of a body from within and the spraying of blood that is caused by it isn't very comparable to the beauty that can be seen in the results of supernovae and hypernovae.

 _Well, that's another guild that's been completely slaughtered, although that last death could've been a little cleaner,_ Azu regretted as she looked down at her clothing. _Not that it matters too much anyway since it's beyond trivial for me to clean a mess like this in an instant, albeit without magic… in a world where the only logical way to achieve such a task so quickly is through magic. … Well, at least Alice has everyone around here distracted so that they wouldn't see anything suspicious from me._

With a not even as much as a glance, Azu willed the blood on her clothes to disappear - which it did - before heading towards a building that resembled an Ancient Greek temple. She had spotted it earlier when she was free falling from her platform above. Alice had mentioned the possibility that Sun Magic was "a new kind of magic created by people who worshipped the Sun God Helios." Temple that looks as if it was Ancient Greek? God with a Greek name? Maybe they're related, so it'd be worth checking out.

 _Oh, and now that I think about it, I had used my non-magical flight abilities to land softly at the end of my freefall, but I haven't come up with a "spell name" for that…_ Azu realized. _Mavis didn't question my lack of incantation when we dove down the cave at Mount Zonia because she already knew my past at that point and Alice wouldn't question it too much because she knows about what I can do to a certain extent as well, but everyone else on this planet still doesn't know and probably should never know because I don't want magical researchers following me everywhere asking me to be subjected to their research and experiments._

Pausing to ponder for a moment, she ended up choosing **'Volare'** , the Latin verb for flight. With that out of the way, she continued to make her way towards the temple. With any luck, Alice would be done with the crowd of dark mages and criminals she had attracted with her botched landing soon enough so that they could investigate the temple together without too much of a delay.

By the time Azu reached the temple, it seemed that luck was plentiful in this instance, for Alice was also walking up to the temple with no change in her appearance but a few wrinkles on her dress. "No problems, I take it?" Azu called out, to which Alice agreed, "No problems, thanks to your advice." The former couldn't help but smile there and then, proud that her advice actually helped.

"They seemed too easy, though. It didn't feel right," Alice continued.

"About that, the Guild Master of Amarok Fang was drunk enough to reveal without hesitation that her counterpart in Arcadia Leaf is currently away visiting yet another Dark Guild in a neighboring country," Azu informed her. "We're going to be quite busy today…"

Giving an understanding nod, Alice returned her attention to the very out of place building that stood before her. In contrast to the colorfully painted brick and plaster houses that dominated the town, this structure, which she now recognized as a temple, was completely white. Its purity in lack of color pigments let it shine over the rest of the buildings in the town, giving the impression that it was the most important structure for the people of the town.

Looking past the massive chiseled pillars that held up the roof, Alice saw at least a few dozen people standing diligently by what appeared to be the entrance to the structure. She was also able to sense that they were mages of a higher caliber than those she had just fought. It would be hard to imagine what they could be there for other than to guard something of great importance.

Looking over at Azu, Alice was met with an expecting stare from her, as if she was waiting for Alice to gather all the clues and figure the situation out. "Got the general idea of what's going on here?" Azu tested, to which a swift nod was received. "Good." A thoughtful pause followed. "Before we force our way in, I should point out that this style of temple architecture is another thing originally from my old world and is from the same group of people that had Helios as their Sun deity, or something like that. We should look out for things that might be used for summoning as we go through, assuming that your theory from before is correct." With an understanding nod shared between both girls, they left to continue their work on that note.

As they approached the front of the temple, one of the mages guarding its entrance called out, "Halt! State your business!" From his side, another warned, "There is a good chance that you will not be allowed entrance because the Head Priest is attempting to contact the Great Helios!"

"Just taking a calming stroll," Azu quipped, to the irritation of the mage guards.

Inching closer, a third guard soon threatened, "If you come any closer, we will be forced to fire upon you!"

Ignoring the warnings given to them, Azu and Alice continued on at a casual pace rather than a pace that showed any signs of rushing, just to further aggravate the guards. When the two were practically at the steps of the temple, the guards finally took it upon themselves to begin attacking the would-be intruders.

" **Sinum Currus!"** They all shouted in unison, raising their hands to face their targets. Almost immediately after, plasma burst forth from their hands at immense speeds, rushing forward as it took the shape of a line of gleaming chariots each led by four horses, all of which looked as if they were made of the sun itself. The newly created vehicles were going so fast that their targets didn't have much time to react, so little so that Alice only had time to do the first thing she could think of. Opening her mouth wide, she began to eat the Sun Magic as it raced towards her.

 _This is delicious!_ She raved, tears of happiness forming in her eyes. Much to her disappointment, however, the stream of magic flowing into her mouth was far from endless and ended much too fast for her liking.

The mages guarding the temple stared at her, aghast at what they had just witnessed. As mages in Arcadia Leaf, their Guild Master had told all of them stories about a handful of people in his birth country of Fiore who had the ability to eat certain kinds of magic: the Slayers. They were entertained by the stories of their power and potential, but never did they think that one who could eat _SUN MAGIC_ would come to Seredina and attack. There was no doubt in the reality of the situation; Their worst nightmare was right in front of them.

Taking advantage of the fact that the guards were frozen in terror, Azu murmured, **"Absolute Zero."** Without so much as the time to register that she had even moved her mouth, all of the dark mages were encased in her ice. As per the usual, this also meant that their entire being was frozen and they were now dead.

"You're… not killing them?" Alice hesitantly hoped, but that hope was ultimately crushed when she was given the response of, "Don't worry. They're completely dead. I just used a spell that isn't destructive because it would be inconvenient if the temple collapsed before we even got to see what's inside of it." _It's what she always does,_ Alice tried to convince herself in consolation.

Making their way past Azu's ice sculptures, they entered the temple and found that it was only a single, humongous room on the inside. It was, for the most part, very dimly lit with only torches to serve as light by the walls. However, there was unsurprisingly also a little sun in the center of the temple that was floating midway between the floor and the ceiling. Beneath that sun was an elderly man who had his hands clasped together was entirely absorbed in chanting quietly at it. He was wearing a white cassock, something Azu noted as being similar to what the Roman Pontiff would've worn back on Earth.

"Do we, um… interrupt him?" Alice whispered through the corner of her mouth as she looked at the elderly man.

"It's not like we can just walk up to him and ask questions," Azu replied. Sweeping her gaze over the room, she continued, "He's the only person in here other than us, so he must be the Head Priest that the mages outside mentioned. If that's true, then he most certainly wouldn't want to be bothered and probably also wouldn't want to answer any questions we have."

Alice thought for a moment and then agreed, "I guess you're ri-"

"ENEMIES OF THE GREAT HELIOS! HOW DARE YOU SET FOOT INTO HIS MOST HOLY TEMPLE!" The Head Priest suddenly screamed as he finally noticed the two girls standing in the entrance. "LEAVE AT ONCE OR FACE HIS WRATH!"

" **Swords of Thanatos,"** Azu whispered before adding, "I'd like to see your 'Great Helios' try." With a flash, she was behind the Head Priest in an instant and cut his head off in one clean stroke before using her second sword to cut him in half across the abdomen. With blood pouring out from his lethal wounds, she quickly threw up all three pieces of him into the miniature sun above them.

Ignoring the face Alice was giving her out of disdain for brutal killings, Azu proceeded to wordlessly begin pouring magic into the small sun that remained above her. The currently frozen and dead mages by the entrance of the temple had said that the, also currently dead, Head Priest was attempting to contact Helios. Since Helios was more than likely not in the room, it could only be assumed that the chanting the Head Priest was doing earlier was to pour magic into the little sun in order to summon Helios. Azu had no idea if a certain type of magic was needed to summon Helios, nor did she care. If this sun was the object through which he was summoned, then all she had to do was pour a tremendous amount of magic into it and hope for the best.

And that she did. Within seconds, the small sun began to expand and lighten in color. As long as Azu continued feeding it with magic, it kept doing so until it suddenly turned pure white and quickly vanished into a cloud of white vapor that clouded the entire temple.

Once the air cleared, a very tall man, at least 20 feet tall, stood where the sun once was. Glaring at Azu and Alice in turn, he boomed, "YOU HAVE DEFILED MY TEMPLE! FOR YOUR CRIMES, **PERISH!** " And with that last word, solar flares raced from all the surfaces of Helios's body towards where each of the two girls were standing.

Alice leaped aside gracefully to avoid being hit, allowing the flares to explode upon contact with the wall behind her. And then she heard an even louder explosion from where Azu was standing. Apparently, the girl in black hadn't moved at all when the flares were sent in her direction and she had taken the hit to its fullest extent. As a reward for her lack of movement, she was enveloped in a ball of white fire and remained within it for a good half a minute.

And then she got bored. Thankfully, the Sun God's fire was hotter than the God Serena's **Purgatory Dragon's Blazing Hell** , or Azu would've been seriously disappointed with the assignment of the proper title of "god". However, the heat was only enough to barely tickle her and that was nowhere near interesting enough for her, as she believed that an actual god would have much more power than just enough to make her feel a little heat. Sure, Helios might not have been an actual god on Earth, but things might be different on Earthland.

" **Null,"** she stated, clearing the fire around her. Looking at where Alice was originally standing, Azu turned to Helios and told him, "You know, at least I took care not to damage your temple, but then you go and destroy it yourself…"

"THE PRICE MATTERS NOT! YOU MUST BE REMOVED FROM THE FACE OF EARTHLAND FOREVER!" The Sun God retorted angrily. "BESIDES, MY SERVANTS WILL REBUILD MY TEMPLE FOR ME!"

"Servants?" Alice repeated, not sure of who these 'servants' might be.

The Sun God proclaimed proudly, "THE PEOPLE OF THIS TOWN ARE ALL MY SERVANTS-"

"Then that means you'll have to die as well," Azu interjected. "Alice, you'd better steel yourself for this fight. If you must, you can change into your other form, but try not to so we can avoid civilian casualties. The Council will be pissed if the entire town was slaughtered, but if it's only a handful of dark mages and the god that calls them his servants, they should be pretty much okay with it."

"I'll try to ignore what you said about killing being okay, so let's go!" Alice yelled in anticipation of fighting a god for the first time.

"INSOLENT FOOLS!" Helios roared. "YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL M-"

" **False God's Titanium Fist."**

" **Etherion Dragon's Iron Fist!"**

True to Azu's advice to not talk during a fight, the duo ignored the god's comment and simply rushed to attack in sync. Azu attacked the left side of Helios's chest in her usual calm demeanor while Alice took the right side with her own innocent excitement. The result of the attack was that their opponent was blown clean off of his feet and sent flying into one of the walls of his temple.

"HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO-" he started, only to be cut off by his own groans of pain.

" **Etherion Dragon's Crushing Fang!"**

" **False God's Scythe."**

Alice's strike went for the neck this time, going for a weaker point as Azu had suggested. As per her own advice, Azu also went for a weak spot, slashing at the god's stomach. That said, Helios was gigantic compared to a normal human, so a hard strike to the neck didn't mean that anything would be broken and a slash across the stomach didn't mean that he was cut in two. Yes, it was still true that he was being choked and cut open at the same time, but neither was going to be fatal.

Getting up as the two girls rebounded from their attacks, he screamed, **"AETHIOPS! BRONTE! EOUS! STEROPE!"**

With only Helios's screams as a warning, Alice and Azu were treated to the summoning of another chariot much like the ones they had seen from the earlier confrontation with the mage guards outside. However, there was one big difference here. The amount of magic power that he exhibited in commanding that spell was truly enormous - so much so that it caused the foundations of the temple to shake.

"Alice! Go attack him and use whatever you have to - I'll keep these overpowered sun horses off of you!" Azu declared.

Alice simply looked over and nodded in understanding before activating Dragon Force. She didn't do it a moment too soon, for the instant that her power-up finished, Helios was also ready, shouting, **"SKOTÓNO!"**

With that, the four horses broke free from their chariot and raced towards Alice, who in turn had charged at Helios. Heading to intercept the horses from reaching Alice, Azu muttered, **"Volare."** Hovering barely above the ground to grant her greater mobility, she raced towards the first of the horses.

 _I am NOT sticking my precious black swords into pure plasma, especially because it's magical,_ Azu assured herself (and her swords by extension) as she reached her target. _I'll just have to use my hands… as much as I prefer to use weapons. Oh well, I'll just have to take it out on someone else later on._

Materializing a pair of black gloves directly onto her hands, she softly spoke, **"Enchant: Null."** With no time wasted, she cocked her right arm back and slammed her fist into the charging horse's muzzle, knocking it aside into the horse coming up from behind it. That spared Azu no time, however, for the remaining two horses rushed by from behind the temporarily fallen two.

Picking up her speed, Azu sped in the direction of the horse closest to Alice. When she was only inches from its side, she slid underneath it and punch straight up, knocking the horse a good few feet into the air. Using her **Volare** to increase her height off the ground, Azu let the horse fall back to the ground a little, but only so that she could get in a strong punch to its side, sending it flying into the second horse that had previously run by her.

As much as she would've preferred that it would be that easy to incapacitate the four horses, that proved to not be the case, as the first two horses she had taken on had just gotten back up, ready to continue. Luckily for her, the **Null** enchantment had taken down the horses' magical strength, so a few more hits to each of them should be able to dispel them. It wouldn't be so long until she would be able to fight Helios, unless Alice finished first…

In the meanwhile, Alice wasn't exactly having a good time. Sure, she might be the "Black Dragon of the Apocalypse", but Helios was apparently pretty good at blocking and dodging hits when he meant business. As she was considering the fact that Helios had taken the previous hits on purpose, she remembered something along the lines of what Azu had told her and applied it to what had happened (all while still fighting at full throttle). The Sun God probably only took those hits from before because he was trying to shout at Azu and herself rather than actually fight them. As soon as he had stopped trying to belch out insults for their insolence in his presence, he had put up a much greater fight, forcing Azu to single-handedly fight four horses of preposterous power and leaving Alice to face him at his best.

Snapping herself out of her thoughts before she ended up like Helios did earlier, Alice faced towards the aforementioned God and decided that it would be in everyone's best interests that she take him down as quickly as possible. As such, she raised her arms in front of her and opened her mouth wide, shouting, **"Etherion Dragon's Three Pillars!"** Upon her command, beams of concentrated ethernano burst from her hands and mouth, streaking directly towards her intended target.

On reflex, Helios brought up a palm and engulfed it in his godly Sun Magic in order to overpower the incoming attack. Or… at least, that was what he thought would happen. Instead, he was unpleasantly surprised when his magic failed to overpower the incoming attack. Usually, he could overpower any strength of magic with only what he had just failed with, so this fight was beginning to alarm him even further. Receiving the full force of the attack, he was lifted off of his feet once again and thrown back, although not into a wall this time. Rather, he was knocked into the four horses he had summoned, which were quickly thrown there by Azu once she realized that Alice was finally getting somewhere. They collided with such force that Helios dispelled the magic of his own horses, leaving only the chariot's body behind, but that too disappeared soon after.

This time, the Sun God recovered far faster than he had the first time he had been thrown, but with Azu freed up from her duty of horse control, she too joined the battle. As Helios shot countless miniature suns at the two girls, of which Azu dodge all and Alice dodged all but the ones she decided to eat, Azu prepared a new enchantment for her temporary gloves. Whispering, **"Enchant: Sĭwáng,"** the gloves were given the concentrated power of Azu's ridiculously powerful death-like spell. All she needed now was for the god to stop summoning the endless streams of suns so that she could get in a solid hit and kill him.

Turning to Alice as they dodged the suns in midair, the two shared a knowing glance, realizing it was about time that this battle came to an end. Together, they positioned themselves shoulder to shoulder, facing Helios directly in front of them as they continued to dodge and cast their spells in unison.

" **Etherion Dragon's Roar!"**

" **False God's Bellow."**

The spells reached Helios and disintegrated all of the suns in their paths, for their combined strength, even if they were separate spells, easily outmatched the magical strength of the suns. When the spell broke through Helios's defense once again, Azu wasted no time in accelerating through the air with her **Volare** and coming down fast on the center of the god's chest with her fist.

Still on the ground, Helios expected the singular punch not to do very much damage, even if he couldn't dodge it at all. However, the **Null** and **Sĭwáng** enchantments that Azu had placed on her gloves not only removed the Sun God's magical defenses on impact but also delivered a massive dose of pure death straight to the god at the same time. Being a god, he got lucky and didn't die from what should've been a lethal blow, but he was pretty damn close to the edge.

Now knowing that the amount of danger he was in was taking to completely new heights, Helios was forced into using his most powerful magic. He had never before been forced to use such magic against mere humans. It was beyond blasphemous and yet, it would be completely necessary if he wanted to make it out alive. However, there was only one problem: He couldn't actually move. He had realized his perilous situation almost immediately following the strike from the girl in black and had come to his decision almost immediately after that, but he found that he could not move to execute that plan.

Azu, fully aware of where she had hit and the force with which she had done so, already knew why he couldn't move. She had very quickly done a scan of the Sun God's body to test if he was anatomically similar to humans and she was rewarded with the information that he was indeed similar anatomically to humans. Carrying this knowledge into the battle against him, she lowered his magical defenses and punched directly in the center of his chest, causing the sheer power of the punch to race through his chest and dislocate and/or snap the vertebrae of his spine. God or not, so long as he had a body structure similar to that of a human, a snap of his spine and he wasn't going to be moving anywhere soon - unless he had very high healing abilities like Azu did.

Intent on finishing what was almost done, Azu momentarily looked in the direction of Alice and materialized a copy of her gloves onto Alice's hands, enchantments included, albeit purple to match her attire. Alice, knowing Azu's abilities, didn't question this action too much and just took it to mean that the gloves would help in the fight, somehow. Sending an understanding nod of confirmation to Azu, the two of them set their sights back on the downed Sun God before leaping up into the air together.

Azu reached her preferable spot to attack from - midair, about ten feet above the form of Helios lying on the ground - thanks to the additional speed given by her **Volare**. Using the short amount of time she had before Alice delivered what would likely be the almost-killing blow, Azu whispered, **"False God's Fall,"** pointing at the central part of the Sun God's left breast. It would merely crush the area around his heart, but that was something survivable for a god. Even though he had a massive gash on his stomach from Azu's previous **False God's Scythe** and even though he was paralyzed due to his spine being fractured, he could still live on, came next, however, was a different story.

Streaking down only half a second after Azu's attack, Alice brought her two fists together in front of her, ready to slam down onto her target, and shouted, **"DRAGON SLAYER'S SECRET ART: ETHERNANO DOMINION!"**

Even before her fists made contact, the pressure resulting from her Secret Art's initiation while having Dragon Force active caused the ground underneath her to crack and quake and even dent. When she landed the hit, her fists made quick work of Helios's ribcage, collapsing his lungs, bursting his heart open, shattering what was left of his spine in the area, and finally, shattering what remained of the temple's floor below his body and creating a massive crater. To save herself from a thoroughly disgusting scene, Alice had been careful not to pierce his skin and send bits of his lungs, heart, and bones flying out, not to mention the vast amounts of blood lost to internal bleeding that would come gushing out. It was bad enough that Azu had already slashed open the skin of his abdomen and Alice didn't need more than that. Just thinking about it made her sick - it made her remember her centuries of time under the curse of that "all-powerful God" and the countless murders she was responsible for during that time.

And then it hit her: Wasn't this just another case of her having murdered someone? Sure, it was Azu who had decided that the Sun God should die for having helped the Dark Guild Arcadia Leaf, but she couldn't just blame Azu for it. She had fought alongside Azu willingly, so it wasn't like she had no choice as it had been under the control of the "all-powerful God". No, she had full control over her decisions and wills now and yet, she decided to join her new friend in her mission to exterminate the strongest of the Dark Guilds in Ishgar. But then, if she said it that way, didn't it mean that she had murdered countless other people when she was being dragged around by Azu? Even if Azu had been the one to kill the members of Amarok Fang, didn't Alice herself play a big part in their deaths, since Azu would only kill them after she had beaten them? Maybe if she hadn't done anything and just let Azu kill them, she wouldn't have been involved at all, but Azu had only brought her out to the mountains to do exactly what she had done… But she still couldn't blame Azu because there clearly had to be a reason for what she had done, otherwise, she would've just killed everyone in Amarok Fang by herself without Alice's 'help'. But then again, everything was her choice to do this time around, so it really was her fault-

And then something hard hit her on the back of the head, snapping her out of her spiraling thoughts. Looking around to see what she had felt, Alice realized that it was Azu that had hit her across the back of the head. Before she could question why, she got her answer: "Oi, calm down a bit," Azu urged. "You're probably thinking about how you murdered someone even though it's one of the last things you would do, but he's not dead just yet." Returning to the Sun God's side, she slammed her left fist through his chest and into the ground, piercing the skin on both sides (and giving Alice the sight she had so carefully avoided), and slammed her right fist into his skull with even greater strength (and giving Alice yet another sight she would have greatly preferred to never have seen). " _Now_ , he's dead. And before you go on thinking that any of today's deaths were your fault, unless you actually did kill someone when you were fighting in the streets, which would actually be your fault, just know that your hands were never at fault for the act that ultimately ended their lives. Each time I watched you fight someone, it was always at _my_ hands that they died, not yours. Sure, you fought all of them, but not once did you deliver the killing blow. Since you told me that you wouldn't want to murder people at all, I only had you knock the members of Amarok Fang unconscious, without giving them any lethal wounds or outright killing them. Sure, I guess it still counts as assisting a murder if you knock someone out so that someone else can kill them, but let's just ignore that because that doesn't help your case at all and it wouldn't be good to think about that and I have no idea why I said that…" Pausing slightly, she sighed at her mistake and continued with a little more resolve, "Ignoring that last bit of what I just said, just know for yourself that you aren't a murderer. Unless you're suggesting you actually want to be one…"

With a furious shake of the head from an Alice with tears barely hanging in her eyes, Azu smiled warmly back at her. Even if she couldn't help Alice completely in dealing with her past and how it would affect her present and future, she could at least try a little. Changing the topic to one that wouldn't be so readily avoided, Azu reminded Alice, "Well, now that we're done, Mavis is still waiting for us above the city. Don't worry about flying up there by yourself. I'll carry you up there and hopefully, you'll feel a little better by the time we've met up with Mavis again."

With a complaint nod from one and another warm smile from the other, the two set off, finished in the town of Seredina.

* * *

 **Dark Guilds Left on the Hit List: 5**

* * *

 **A/N:** **I'm not great with languages, English included, so please forgive me if I mistranslated any phrases, whether they be Polish, Latin, or Greek. Below are some explanations, translations, and related facts for parts I felt like writing more about.**

...

 **I wasn't completely sure on how to tackle drunken slurring, so the outcome might be a little confusing. For those who might not have fully understood, here's that passage in (somewhat) normal English:**

 _As Azu walked towards her, she turned and slurred, "Oh hey there, back from Minstrel so soon?..."_

" _Minstrel?" Azu repeated._

" _Didn't you say that you were going to go and visit Blended Note before coming back to your guild here?" The drunk Guild Master ran on._

" _Well, you've got the wrong person," Azu mocked. "I'm here to play with you and then kill you, nothing else, so hurry up and put up a fight if you've got anything in you."_

...

 **Not long after that short conversation, Amarok Fang's Guild Master was going to use a spell that started "Gromada Ar-", which refers to the Polish name for the Arches Cluster - Gromada Arches. The Arches Cluster is the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way Galaxy, so the spell to be created that was named after such a star cluster would be a very concentrated and ferocious explosion that would easily rip the entire street around the target to shreds - not to mention what it could do to any normal mages. The only possible downside is that caster must be in close proximity to the target in order for the spell to be at its most effective, meaning that the caster risks ripping themselves to shreds if they're unable to withstand the force of their own spell.**

 **As for the other spells with stars in their names, Altairis is a canon spell named after the 12th brightest star as seen from Earth, Altair. Altair can't actually turn into a black hole by any scientific means, but this is fiction so who really cares, you know? Anyway, Zeta-1 Scorpii is a star you've probably never heard of and it isn't remotely close to being among the brightest stars in the night sky on Earth, but Azu knows a thing or two that could help her out every now and then. In this case, the star with more mass won over the star that's more visible in the night sky.**

...

 **In Greek mythology, Helios isn't actually a god, but rather only the personification of the sun. Despite this, and also the fact that he doesn't have any major temples on Earth, it wouldn't make sense for him to have to settle as a 'personification' in a world of magic, where he could actually be a god. Does that actually make sense? No, but is a world of magic necessarily supposed to make sense? No, not really. It'd be nice if it made sense, but then again, the world is not so kind.**

 **As for the time that Helios started getting serious in the fight, he shouted, "AETHIOPS! BRONTE! EOUS! STEROPE!" These four - Aethiops, Bronte, Eous, and Sterope - are the names of the four horses that draw his chariot, according to the works of Eumelus of Corinth.**


End file.
